Sugar and Spice Part 2
by The Cat's Whiskers
Summary: Everyone is having anxiety attacks over the fact that Angel has just handed over a human baby to the Fell Brethren like a sack of spuds on supermarket sale, Illyria is still being inexplicably tetchy and moody, and what Lindsey McDonald is up to is anyone's guess. Follows Shadowed Souls as the penultimate story in the series. Multi-part story set just before the episode Power Play
1. Chapter 1

**_Disclaimer_**_: Please see Part 1 Chapter 1_

For Mendenbar

And for our joint hope of Christian Kane guest-starring with David Boreanaz on _Bones_…

Author's Note: The story Sugar and Spice is followed as a whole by the final story, _The Blood Will Tell_. Therefore there are some elements in this story that may confuse as they don't appear relevant, but they put in place what will happen shortly.

**SUGAR & SPICE**

**Part 2**

Chapter 1

Since vampires don't need oxygen to breathe, only to talk, they avoid embarrassing side effects of the biological process such as hiccoughs, heartburn – and being breathless and flustered when your boss walks by at just _that_ moment when you've spilled _very_ hot coffee down your cleavage (ladies) or crotch (gentlemen) in front of all your subordinate staff _and_ simultaneously just remembered that you _haven't_ sorted your said boss's schedule for that very important conference he or she or both of you are supposed to be attending tomorrow – in a city booked up to the rafters because of Oktoberfest/the Olympics/ Wrestlemania/the Superbowl/ComicCon insert the large-scale-hugely-popular event of your panicked choice.

It had barely been the crack of dawn when Harmony, nervously watching the inexorably rising sun, had got baby Cordelia to Rodeo Drive, but it was amazing how fast you could gain access, and what you could manage to achieve when you did, if you tossed out useful phrases like 'Wolfram & Hart', 'corporate expense account' and the top-trump card: 'bill it to Angel'.

Decked out in Dior, Cordy gurgled merrily as Harmony took her up to the 7th Floor to Wolfram & Hart's…Day Care? Crêché? Holding pen? It wasn't like she'd ever had cause to visit before today. But according to Ankh-Sun-Amun in Posthumous Accounts, one of Wolfram & Hart's best 'recruitment' lures was that they took being an 'equal-opportunity employer' to a level that would boggle the mind of the most extremist ultra-left-wing liberal. They were a 'multicultural' employer like no other.

Her nose told her what her eyes didn't: that some of the 'infants' included were only partially human, and indeed entirely non-human. Some of the critters in there were definitely 'offspring' as opposed to 'children', like the little male (?)…thing…that looked like one of those pre-Raphaelite _Putti_ faux-cherubs you saw on those big old Paintings by those Old Mister guys, except that it had a serious back-hair problem for a baby – oh, and the little tyke farted _and _belched tiny gouts of _flame_ – winding and diaper changing him/it must be a real treat.

"But you don't have to worry," burbled Amelia/Delia/Celia/Felicia – some name that ended with an 'eelia' at any rate - whilst Cordy was put in a play area with bright blocks that made her tiny face smile (and okay, drool a bit) "there's nothing to worry about at Wolfram & Hart-"

_Huh, if only you knew…_Harmony bit down, literally, on her carried-over-from-human tendency to blurt out inconvenient truth at what her parents had often angrily told her was 'always the worst possible moment; for goodness sake, girl, we ought to have named you _Discord_.'

'Eelia' was babbling, "We have the very _highest _calibre of staff here. Our staff members are constantly on the alert at all times!" she actually _trilled_, an ability which Discovery Channel had led Harmony to believe required years of voice-training as an opera singer to pull off.

"You bet they are, especially after that little mobile-fire-hazard's mama came in unexpectedly, just in time to catch that assistant prodding him to fart flame to light her cigarettes to save on matches." A tall woman – a good six feet two or three inches in those heels, probably 5' 8" or 9" barefoot – with her back to them at a nearby copy machine, muttered this aside to the guy standing next to her.

To Harmony, both looked like mid-level managers - or actually mid-range lawyers, given both were wearing expensive silk/cashmere business suits, plus his conservative crew cut and her dark brown hair taken up in a too severe chignon were courtesy of one of LA's most fashionable gay hair-stylists. The stylist actually made the bulk of his fortune in a lucrative make-up artist/disguise sideline for non-humans. Many of those in turn were also Wolfram & Hart clients, who paid top dollar for the make-up artist's expertise in assisting what Harmony had overheard Wesley Wyndham-P describe to Angel's werewolf-girlfriend as, _'various other-dimensional species – 'demons' in the grossly inaccurate but catch-all vernacular – to pass for humans, sometimes for years on end.'_

When Nina had expressed dubiousness about 'demons' being able to manage such for years on end, even with good make-up, Wesley had asked her, in that very dry English prissy voice he sometimes used, 'have you ever watched any of those appalling American daytime soap-operas that run for eternity? _Days of Our Lives_ and _Kestrel's Landing _or _Falcon's Crest_ or whatever it is? Half the actors in them are about as human as the redwood trees they usually appear to be imitating on screen – I know of at least one full-blood Brachen demon who played a major character for a decade, and there was another character, Edward Bradbury? Eric Brady? Some such nonsense – his 'natural look' was heliotrope scales and Dartmoor-bog fluorescent green horns. They had to write that character out after – well, never mind…'

Pity, Harmony would always wonder now what the heliotrope demon had done…and what was a heliotrope anyway? – the persistent image she had was of a little animated helicopter like in those _Toy Story _movies, which she was fairly sure couldn't be right.

But, right now, Chignon Woman and Tall Guy clearly had no idea Harmony was a vampire with the enhanced hearing of her kind; she easily tuned out the burbling, babbling 'Eelia' for this more interesting bit of gossip as 'Chignon' rolled her eyes down towards the floor and advised 'Guy' dryly, "They _still_ haven't got all of the assistant out of the carpeting."

"Ew…the carpeting?" Guy looked down at the shag under his feet and wrinkled his nose, which was actually a fairly clever 'save', considering he hadn't really been paying attention – at least not if his slightly elevated heart, pulse, respiration and the increased musk of his body scent were anything to go by – to anything much other than his desire to shag the woman next to him, as Spike would have put it.

Blondie bear had been so cross when she hadn't got that joke, but everyone knew the Brits didn't talk real English, how was she supposed know that in England _shag_ was slang for sex…and also for a very expensive type of loose tobacco…_and_ a particularly thick-woven type of carpeting. It was just so not fair – according to Mr I'm A Champion Of Light I Am Spike, English was one of only half a dozen languages in the whole world 'so rich in vocabulary' that it had need to produce a _Thesaurus_ – which, hey, nothing more than a book listing 'different words that mean the same thing' – and yet it made one poor little four-letter word mean _all _those things?!

"Oh yeah; I saw the whole thing from my office…made _Saw Four _look like a student art-house film. Fire baby's mom is half-Orc – who knew something that side of large could move that quietly? - and Orcs are a very emotional species, real wear-their-heart-on-their-sleeve…of course if you upset them, they'll wear _your_ heart on their sleeve, right after they've ripped the still-bleeding sucker from your chest cavity."

Chignon told him this with more cheer than concern, and as she reached up to get another ream of paper from the upper shelf over the copy machine she held the stretch just a _smidgeon_ longer than necessary – huh, not entirely as oblivious to Mr Lustful as she was making an excellent job of appearing to be. That stretch tautened the material of her blouse – decorously open only three buttons to convey the merest hint of cleavage – in such as way as to define her flat stomach, trim waist, and biggest-grapefruit-in-the-stack-sized breasts, each one nestled in a cup of her frilly-lace white bra - just enough a different shade of white to show up clearly against the sheer silk material of the blouse when that silk was tightened across them.

The action also drew attention to her perfectly half-moon shaped big J. Lo bottom. Huh…big boobs, big butt, small waist, long legs. If she'd been blonde instead of brunette she'd have ticked every 'primal instinct – me want now yum, yum' box inside the head of the human male…and a lot of males that _weren't _human. Still, the move was subtle and the duration of holding that stretch perfectly judged, and Harmony admired the panache with which it was done.

"Really? Most folks think Orcs are fake – y'know, just advertising, like Santa Claus and Bigfoot." 'Guy' wasn't totally buying her 'abusive assistant smeared into carpet by half-monster mom' tall tale.

"Oh they're real; they just don't advertise the fact due to all the bad press they get because of Tolkien. He stitched up the King of the Orcs like a seamstress on steroids, did a complete Stoker on him."

"Stoker?"

"As in _Bram_ - like he did to Dracula?"

_Dracula! Yeah, like, oh please! As if._

"Dracula? Oh, please, as if _he's _real. Do you think I started working here _yesterday_?" Harmony blinked as 'Guy' unknowingly verbalised using her exact internal, and scornful, intonations.

"Half the time, a lot of us wonder," 'Chignon' drawled with a nicely derisive arched-eyebrow to match her sardonic tone – Harmony would have happily sold her soul – had she still got one - to have been able to do the Vulcan one-eyebrow thing, "and yes, _Draaah-Kula, darlink_. You want to make it at Wolfram & Hart – check that, you just want to _survive _the average working day here – you should start reading the company archives – they were written by those that lived to tell the tales, and in some cases, even by those who _didn't _– you got to watch out for that sneaky ole perpetuity clause."

"Hey, I've achieved the most billable hours out of my entire department for the last six quarters in a row; I already have a corner office with a plaza view." He protested.

"And your point is?" Yet again, that Vulcanised eyebrow gracefully arched even further up her forehead and Harmony noticed the elegant chignon itself bore more than a passing resemblance to Kate Mulgrew's hairstyle in Season 1 of _Star Trek: Voyager_ – neither of which was probably a coincidence.

But 'Chignon' was making her point: "So did Lilah Morgan – let's see, brutally stabbed to death in LA's _Most Haunted_ hotel and then dismembered, according to what _I _heard, by none other than her lover, our very own current Head of Research and Intelligence, Mr Wesley Wyndham-Pryce. Talk about relationship issues."

_Yikes, Wesley had done that? Note to self – nobody does psycho better than the English. _But 'Chignon' was on a roll:

"And Lindsey McDonald – presumably dead or wishing he was – oh, nor to forget our late, great, _übermeister _Holland Manners. None of _them_ are spending those telephone number bonuses, or ever will be now, are they? This a _pan-dimensional evil law firm_, there's a lot more needed than just racking up billable hours if you're serious about living long enough to retire in the Caymans and enjoy an endless stream of Mohijtoes and jailbait beach-bunnies willing to open their legs and close their eyes to your comb-over, beer gut and saggy butt because of your honed and toned black American Express card – like last year when most of my _learned colleagues _got wiped out by that lava chomp-thing."

Harmony focussed more closely on 'Chignon' as 'Guy' looked mulish and sulky, but didn't recognise her. That wasn't saying much, though, as until Wesley had noticed her name on the in-house newsletter and plucked her out of the Typing Pool, she hadn't really registered the lawyers as people – her experienced _haute couture _eye noted variously fashionable outfits, and she could tell Victoria Beckham from John Galliano across a ballroom in a power cut, but the individuals wearing them went by in a blurry blah-blah blurb that was like being asked to pick between _that_ lobster to have for Thermidor or _that_ lobster...they were all ugly, red, shellfish of indistinguishable shellfishyness.

She hadn't even recognised _Wesley _that day he'd walked her up to Angel-bossy's outer office. He'd had to show her a photograph of him standing next to Cordy at the High School Senior Prom before she'd believed that muscular, manly stubble, and just a _teensy _bit psychotic (okay, now she knew, a lot psychotic) Mr Wyndham-Pryce really was the same person as the rabbit-caught-in-the-headlights bespectacled wimpy boy Weeehzleee stood next to an exasperated looking Cordy as stiff as if he were suffering from _rigor mortis_.

Of course, _most _of the staff _had_ been slaughtered and zombified by that horrible big rock-monster thingie with the hooves and horns, but that entire staff complement had been replaced in, like, _a day_, and Lilah Morgan had been _wrong_ about it killing _all_ the staff – nobody in the typing pool had been killed, although of course Miss Morgan I'm the Super-Heroine of Lawyers hadn't considered anyone not a lawyer as real 'staff', Miss Stuck-Up, so she got it wrong, _nyah-nyah_. 'Chignon' might have been one of the few who survived the rock monster, or was just pretending she had, like that vamp over in Westwood who claimed to have seen the Crucifixion, except that he was _so _clearly stuck in Season 1 of _Miami Vice_ before they dumped Phil Collins for Peter Gabriel.

"Oh please, you look like you're six and found out there's no Santa Claus. Man up! I should make you do the research yourself…" Chignon muttered. "Look, Prince Vlad Drakul, Vlad the _Impaler_, was the basis of the Dracula legend. He was the Wolf, Ram and Hart's biggest client back then…bestrode the Balkans like a Colossus…he seized life by the throat and throttled it into submission…"

She sounded more wistful than disapproving, and her lip curl came back as she looked 'Guy' up and down significantly – whose increased sulkiness of pout showed he got the unvoiced implication – before she went on, "…but the _vampire_ Dracula was his grandson, also Prince Vlad Drakul, also a great big wussy-pussy. Gave most of the family fortune to scrofulous peasantry, trying live down the legacy of his grandfather's evil and all that psycho-babble crap, although fair dues half the local peasantry were his father's half-siblings courtesy of grandpa at his most megalomaniacal running amok with anything female and fertile, so technically the money stayed in the family – depends on how you look at it. Anyway, little Drac mixed sorcery with science – a lot of healing magicks combined with herbal medicine and some advanced organic chemistry. Did a lot of tests on the local rural villagers."

"Like Matthias Pavayne?" 'Guy' put in, clearly trying to show he didn't _entirely _wake up in a whole new world every three minutes.

"Hardly. But he did pre-empt Penicillin by 600 years or so. Anyway, the reason the Drakuls got so high up on the food chain, no pun intended, is because they were Lycans – that's werewolf lineage to you and me; both sides of the family. Occasionally one went lone wolf lobo and either came to a bad end or –

"Became Scourge of Carpathia, bestriding countries like a Colossus et cetera?"

"Yes, or that. Anyway, one night after his usual chest-beating at a local village testing some new cure – the common cold, the clap, whatever – grandson Drac is swanning through the Carpathian forest when another werewolf, either out of laziness or general stupidity tried to turn him into a midnight snack without realising it was committing the lycanthropic version of cannibalism – or at least a serious breach of lupine social etiquette."

"I thought werewolves could tell each other, like vampires and demons and orcs and trolls – "

"Yes, yes, no need to give me a rundown of every olfactorily enhanced sentient species in the multiverse. That's _true_, but wolf-on-wolf kills aren't that uncommon, just like vamps will dust one another for the same reason and why a Mafia don is never at greater risk from his rival _capos _as is he is from his own lieutenants – if you want to become leader of the pack, king of the hill, et cetera. But, being a sorcerer with stout stick, our boy managed to kill it and staggered towards home – which really _was_ his castle, where some newly risen vamp lurches out from the local churchyard and also thinks, oh, easy midnight snack – it was damn close to a theme for the evening. He dusts it with his stick as it kills him."

"And he was Turned?"

"If you mean vamped, yes. Forget 'Turned' – oh gothic romance has _so_ much to answer for, not the least of which is third-rate bodice-rippers penned by over-wrought adolescent fat girls. Anyway, fast-forward five centuries of unending undead misery and His Royal Highness was ripe for the con. Bram Stoker gave him a shoulder to cry on, there, there and promised to restore his family's reputation before doing a total hatchet job with 'Dracula' the novel."

"How much of a hatchet job?" pressed 'Guy', his tone unable to disguise his transparent intent to go and reread the thing in one go about two minutes after concluding this conversation.

"A veritable Texas Chainsaw Massacre," claimed 'Chignon', clearly still more amused at his scepticism than offended. "Most of the novel Stoker made up wholesale as he went along, but if you want a few specific highlights…let's see…Okay, Van Helsing – _not _some epic Mystical Lone Ranger, just – at that time - the latest in a string of foaming-mouthed nut-jobs determined to kill the unkillable 'Count' – Stoker twisted the knife further by downgrading him from a Prince to a second-rate aristocrat. Think, Daniel Holtz versus Angelus –"

"Who – never mind; later. Carry on." Guy urged.

'Chignon's' smirk widened, "Smart boy. I admit, Hugh Jackman was delicious – in anything, that boy would be delicious, let's be honest – but the _real _Van Helsing had a face like a warthog's ass and a personality to match; apparently the reason he survived so many supernatural encounters was that he didn't do personal hygiene, _ever_ – try and stab him, shoot him, poison him, claw him, whatever – and it took ten minutes to reach skin through the layers of grime. Nothing with sanity was going to put its mouth near enough to sink its fangs into that walking bio-hazard. In short, poor old Dracula was well and truly screwed with his pants on – and so it remains, basically. Dracula's never seen so much as one red cent of any royalties, and now he has all sorts of sorcerers, tourists and vampire-groupies or vampire-hunters barging into his Carpathian castle as-they-so-please and hounding the life – or unlife – out of him."

"He really is unkillable?" 'Guy's' tone finally showed he was having the sense to listen to what 'Chignon', aka The Voice of Experience In This Nut House, was telling him.

Harmony focussed her attention on 'Chignon' – an unkillable vampire – now _that _was a story worth hearing.

"Apparently so. According to what I read in the archives, he'd already spent five hundred years trying to commit suicide by the time Stoker got his greedy hooks into him. Mainly because he is the _only_ vampire in the world, bar none, who _can_ actually become a wolf, and a bat, and who can hypnotise people, and who can re-corporealise himself after being dusted…Which is the problem really."

'Chignon' moved aside as someone else came to the copier machine and 'Guy' moved with her, absently forgetting his copies as he was caught up in the story. "I thought you stake a vampire in the heart, it goes 'poof' pile of dust?"

"It does, ergo the verb, 'to dust a vampire…' or 'the Slayer dusted the vampire'…or _modern_ vampires at any rate. When The First tried to wipe out the Slayer it went Old School to a prehistoric form of vampire, the Turok-Han, which laughed in the face of Mr Pointy and can only be killed by being decapitated or immolated. Thing is, Dracula tried them all on himself – stake, decapitate, dismember, dissipate, immolate, wood-chipperate. Every time and everything he tried, or anyone else tried, his body just turns to this sort of damp mist that re-solidifies, even when he tries not to. Lots of immortality seekers – like the unlamented Matthias Pavayne, for instance – looked into Dracula's case to see if they could duplicate it, but no go."

"Too complicated?" suggested Guy.

"Too dangerous. That's the thing with real life – no writer of fiction would try to get away with stuff so far fetched. I mean: one random night a half-baked, half-lycan, glorified-alchemist-claimed-scientist stroke third-rate-sorcerer who'd been self-dosing with his own home brewed 'medical' potions for who knows how many years happens to coincidentally get mauled to the point of death by a werewolf _and _a vampire in the space of the same hour? It was one of those freakish once in a millennium confluence of circumstances. No way to replicate all those variables exactly. And when you're a power-obsessed psychopath like Pavayne you want the playing field tilted as unevenly – in your favour – as you can get it."

© 2009 & 2011, The Cat's Whiskers


	2. Chapter 2

**_Disclaimer_**_: Please see Part 1 Chapter 1_

**SUGAR & SPICE**

**Part 2**

**Chapter 2**

_So no chance of becoming the Immortal Harmony like Count Drac' then….oh well, best make my excuses to burbling 'Eelia' and -_

"And Tolkien – J.R.R. 'Lord of the Rings' Tolkien – did the same thing to the Orc King as Stoker did to Dracula?"

Harmony hesitated, just for a moment longer – she might as well listen to the last bit as well.

"More or less; he played on the fact that there was a bit of a rivalry going on between Orcs and Trolls. They're like Labradors and Golden Retrievers – both a species of dog, if you get the analogy –apparently the two species actually get on very well with each other and always have. But thanks to that Brothers Grimm fairytale about the Evil Man-Eating Troll under the Bridge, the Trolls got all the publicity and seeped into the public consciousness from generation unto generation whilst the Orcs were just the wall-eyed cousins on the edge of the photo, perpetually labelled as whatshisname and ThatGuy and Y'know-who's-he-whatsit."

"I know about Trolls. They're practically vegetarian. They don't eat _people_." Guy pointed out, sounding confident and a little indignant; this factoid was news to Harmony – but then, she'd never been remotely clear on the troll-ogre-orc-bigfoot distinction thing anyway. Fierce, furry, fanged and _large _– what else did you need to know? Anyone with sense took to their heels at 'fierce', right?

'Chignon' gave a chuckle that snapped Harmony's attention to her – and made 'Guy' blink as if dosed with some drug. It was throaty, dirty, wicked - a chuckle as filthy as a mudslide – and somehow completely captivating; it made Harmony smile widely before she realised what she was doing – oh drat, too late, 'Eelia' mistook this for a sign of _interest _and continued droning on about some sort of crèche admin system she'd devised to this person who had actually stayed still long enough to 'listen'. Why couldn't lava-monster have taken out her last year? Unless it had, and she was a replacement...person?

Chignon carried on, "Of course they don't eat people. Anyone who bothers to check _Merlin's_ _Complete_ _Daemonaica Biologic_ knows _that_. Trolls don't have bloodlust, they just _lust_. The only human part that bridge troll ever ate were _pussies galore_," she waggled her eyebrows suggestively. "The reason the Grimm Brothers got the Evil Carnivorous Troll version was because the local lords got fed up of every gal from the Princess to the poorest pauper's doe-eyed daughter popping out Troll hybrid babies; they went around kidnapping prostitutes and nubile serf girls and throwing them off the bridge at it, but still couldn't stop it rampaging through the XX-chromosome half of the human race like a nymphomaniac – or satyr, I suppose, it being male – including their prized princesses and duchesses, so they hunted it down and then spread tales of it being a hideous monster insatiable for human flesh – which is perfectly true for male trolls, except not in a zombie-eat-your-face-off kind of way."

"Wait, let me guess…" Guy began ticking off on his fingers, "most hybrid human-troll babies are _male_, but male trolls take on the physical appearance of the _first_ adult male creature they see, _so,_ all bad momma had to was put a painting, or some sketch, of her husband in front of the crib first off and hey, he's got a bouncing, healthy male heir who's the spitting image of him down to the Concorde nose or the batwing ears."

"_Mm, you're not as dumb as you look_…And the dynasty of champions founding father is none the wiser," Chignon agreed, clearly not intending for him to have heard her initial _sotto voce _utterance and so missing the angry, peeved look he shot her.

"Female troll gestation is only about 18 weeks or so, not 36, and at birth the baby is a third smaller in size than a human baby. Think about it if you're a gal living in Mediaeval Europe – or mediaeval anywhere for that matter - where good medical care consists of being bludgeoned by a whisky bottle first, and your future consists of being expected by your unwashed, uncouth, uncaring lout of a cheating husband to pop out his heirs like shelling a pea pod - whilst he gives you every venereal disease going courtesy of whatever snivelling scullery slattern he jumped and pumped earlier that night."

Pausing a moment as if to give 'Guy' chance to visualise the word-picture, she finished, "In that case, only having to lug 'Junior' around inside you for less than 20 weeks and not having to get _that _size head through _this _size opening held a great deal of appeal to any female of reasonable intelligence." Chignon shrugged with an expressively deep roll of her shoulders. "Besides, there's also a deliciously warm and secret satisfaction in your revenge as you watch the boorish sot pamper and pander to your sons because they _look_ just like him, whilst any of his real children get short shrift as illegitimate-therefore-ineligible to inherit."

"So the Brothers Grimm lied to save the blushes of their rich male patrons," 'Guy' realised, "because the ladies were throwing _themselves_ of the bridge?"

"_Yahtzee_. Even today, some of the firm's best female clients – in terms of money and loyalty – are those in more…shall we say, male dominated cultures…or those who are enjoying being on their career fast-track but who are coming under serious pressure to produce grand-babies or Hubby's Heir despite knowing he's already banging any combo of the housekeeper, the nanny, the au pair and his secretary and planning to divorce her for some teenage trophy wife in a decade. So they simply pull the same deal as their mediaeval predecessors."

'Chignon' glanced around, but didn't notice Harmony who was still being escorted by babbling Eelia, and lowered her voice slightly, which didn't bother Harmony, as she gossiped, "_Allegedly_ trolls are fairly fabulous at, um, what you might call –"

"Humping and pumping?" he suggested with a crassness that made 'Chignon' wince.

"If you must; the male trolls hired to erm…perform…apparently _guarantee_ both _total _satisfaction, _and_ impregnation. The woman spends one lunch hour at her…don't say that again, please!" Chignon put in as he opened his mouth. "It takes just an hour at her… 'H & P' appointment. Then she births at 20 weeks and surrounds the infant with video or photos of the guy who's her husband, or thinks he's the baby daddy, whatever. After that she keeps it in a crèche, like the one we have here, carries on pretending to be pregnant for the full nine months and _voila_, presents adoring husband or partner or parents or in-laws with bouncing baby boy. I _heard_ that Eloise Kerrayne – the Head of Inhuman Resources – _all _her boys really are little monsters, if you get me."

Harmony tried to think if she'd ever encountered the Head of Inhuman Resources, but she'd never been any good at remembering faces, only good couture – or fashion _faux pas_ – and so many of the suits around here were indistinguishable. It was almost like a uniform - all the top-ranking lawyers wore the best and most expensive gear, which meant once you got above a certain floor, everything was Jimmy Choo shoe, Versace dress, Armani suits, Piaget watches, Dolce & Gabbana bracelets, Laboutin purses, Ralph Lauren and Dior perfumes/eau de cologne and Cartier/Tiffany's jewellery. Faces were just a blur of plastic perfection – expertly and expensively coiffed hair, make-up (including a lot of the men) and accessories. Privately, Harmony wouldn't have been surprised to find out that the Senior Partners had let the rock-monster thing take out a bunch of unwitting _clones_ and then just taken the real staff out of storage – like those sci-fi shows where the guy doesn't _know_ he's not really the real guy until they collide in a corridor!

_To be continued in Chapter 3…_

_© 2011, The Cat's Whiskers_

**_Disclaimer_**_: Please see Part 1 Chapter 1_


	3. Chapter 3

**_Disclaimer_**_: Please see Part 1 Chapter 1_

**SUGAR & SPICE**

**Part 2**

Chapter 3

"Damn it, Spike, I don't have time to deal with your juvenile power-plays right now; Harmony's paid to be at her desk at eight!" Angel loomed in the outer lobby of his office.

Spike gave him the traditional two finger British salute – with the fingers the opposite way around to Churchill's famous Victory sign. "First, I'll do whatever I like, you big ponce. Second – what are you blathering on about now?"

Angel tamped down his instinctive response to Spike's disrespect – which was to backhand his grandson across the room – not least because ever since the _Cup of Perpetual Torment_, courtesy of the late and unlamented Rutherford Sirk, he wasn't entirely sure he would _survive_ another _genuine_ fight with Spike, never mind _win_ it. "I mean my PA is not decorative, no matter how much Harmony might appear to be. Take Harmony outside office hours."

To his surprise, Spike's face twisted into an expression of exasperated irritation. "Uh-uh, grandpa, not guilty – who or whatever's doing Harm…in any and every sense of the word, has nothing to with me. I am about the only one of you bunch of nymphomaniacs who missed the Love Boat."

"What?" Angel scowled.

Spike rolled his eyes, "You and wolf girl, Wesley and the Blue Meanie, Gunn and Miss Electrifying Personality, Lorne and that real-psychic pretending to be fake psychic what's-her-name…Adele, Agnes… at any given time; now Harmony's obviously filled her sexercise vacancy – but not with me."

He perked up and grinned at Angel, "I'm sure she'll stagger in with a silly grin reeking of cheap cologne in an hour or so. Till the daft bint shows up you'll just have to fight those evil paper cuts yourself." Giving Angel a mocking double thumbs-up, the blond vampire strolled off looking happier than he had for days.

Resisting the urge to throw something heavy at the back of Spike's head or make some rude gestures of his own, because that would be childish, if deeply satisfying, Angel went back into his office and carefully closed the door quietly with great deliberation, and then concentrated on not grinding his teeth. At one time, and in any other circumstances, he would have had no hesitation – would have welcomed any excuse – to fire Harmony on the spot.

But…Harmony was actually very good at her job, excellent at it in fact – her 'super-heroine of typing' babble hadn't been far off the mark, unlike Cordy whose ability to undertake the 'back office' – but still vital – role of administration had always been…well, non-existent. That was nothing to do with the real reason, however, which was that as Cordelia's best friend, the blonde vampiress was an indirect but faint link to what he'd had and who he'd lost. Even beyond that was the simple fact that Harmony was essential to his plan – her inability _not _to be treacherous when her personal well-being was threatened was a subtle but key element to his master plan; Harmony would be essential to getting Marcus Hamilton focussing over _here_ whilst Angel was murdering…_his primary target_ over there – not even inside his head did he think about the real or full plan for longer than a couple of seconds at a time.

He glanced at his watch – technically it was not yet 9.00am, but when Harmony deigned to show up, he was going to give her the 'Boss From Hell' Rant – _now_ it was critical Harmony was punctual and reliable in her work attendance.

Despite his irritation he cast a concerned glance through the necrotempered-glass outer office wall where the panoramic view showed the start of a typically sunny Los Angeles day. Like all vampires, Harmony had a 'sun-sense' which told her when the sun was about to 'rise' or 'set' at whichever part of the planet she was on, but that only worked in the vampire's native dimension and not in any it might be visiting or have been taken involuntarily to – like Pylea.

Luckily for Angel that day with Lorne, Gunn and Wes, Pylea's two yellow suns did not attack his demon physiology – it was the emissions of a white sun, like Sol, to give Earth's solar luminary it's 'proper name' – that killed vampires in this dimension. But not all dimensions were like that – some had yellow suns, and others, like Jasmine's home dimension, were so destructive in their atmosphere, topography or hostile life-forms, that a vampire would not survive for particularly long. Surely the stupid girl hadn't gone midnight shopping on the Drive and got so caught up in the latest collections she'd forgotten about sunrise?

Or, unless Spike was right and she had hooked-up with someone…or something? But that didn't quite track – oh as a vampire Harmony had no soul or morality, but depending on the viciousness and intelligence of their inner demon, vampires tended to retain some of the human host's traits. Liam, for instance, had been a sexist drunkard man-ho', which Angelus had revelled in. But Cordy had never considered Harmony to be promiscuous, and nor for all his derogatory and insulting attitude towards her had Spike ever indicated that either; unlike say, Faith Lehane, who until she met Robin Wood had been – to put it bluntly – a mega-slut who'd bang anything pretty, penis-possessing and with a pulse – the last being optional.

Harmony, typically, felt it necessary to have at least some personal acquaintance that had existed longer than a couple of days with the man – or male equivalent of whatever species – she was doing the nasty with. As far as Angel knew the only males in LA who fitted Harmony's criterion in that regard were himself, Gunn, Wes, Lorne, Spike, Lindsey McDonald and Marcus Hamilton. The first four – never in a million years; Spike – yes, but if so, he would have admitted it on the spot. Spike rarely lied, because lying required effort and work to remember the falsehood, which Spike, like most vampires, couldn't be bothered to make, certainly not about something as trivial as sex with Harmony.

Lindsey – again, never in a million years - perhaps his only virtue lay in his sexual loyalty; Lindsey had fallen completely in love with Darla, maybe because she was safely 'unattainable' but 'available by proxy', as he was far too smart to let anyone or anything, much less the Wolf, Ram and Hart, see how he'd felt about Lilah Morgan – including the woman herself; although maybe she'd secretly or subconsciously known and 'reciprocated by proxy' by her affair with Wesley, which he had to admit had come out of left field, at least to his way of thinking. Lindsey certainly didn't love Eve – she was too timid, too 'girly' – but he did care about her and would do his best to protect her and that consideration included not insulting her by sexual betrayal.

Marcus Hamilton – not yet…right now Harmony's existence didn't even register on the…entity's...radar, as she was not relevant. Hamilton was a true child of the Senior Partners in a way Eve had been distracted from being; nothing impinged but the mission. According to Wes's discreet research, Hamilton was almost certainly an avatar created specifically for this plane of existence by using human DNA as a base to grow a human shell or 'meat-suit' for him/it to 'wear'. Possibly the originator had lived centuries ago; Wes' had been muttering something about millennia ago when the Church Knights were often the Champions of Light (plural and simultaneously) and then about the NYPD and a Sergeant Slaughter and the CIA and Burbank, and a Major Casey or a Colonel Vance, some uber-marine I-don't-exist-spy, all of whom bore a suggestively uncanny resemblance to Hamilton.

Then Wes' had lost him altogether with some rambling explanation of how apparently the Senior Partners had taken a leaf out of The First's book to create Hamilton. Apparently Caleb the psycho-priest had been the result of The First using a bit of DNA from some once-famous New York thriller writer (weren't they ten a penny!) named Rickard or Castleton or Rick Castle – something like that – mixed with a 'cellular base' from some guy in an _alternate universe _ - or at least some alien guy in a far away galaxy (and didn't that boggle the mind?) It seemed that the Senior Partners had used a bit of some ancient Champion of Light Conan the Barbarian type and topped it up with this NYPD Detective Slaughter/CIA Major (or Colonel) and mixed it with a bit of some also alien guy in a distant galaxy or dimension or whatever, and cooked up Hamilton.

The short version being that Marcus Hamilton didn't do recreational _anything_. He'd make a move on Harmony only if or when it served a definite purpose in advancing the Wolf, Ram & Hart's agenda, which was what Angel was counting on to happen in the near future, but _not_ right now.

So…okay, he'd unclench and give her another five minutes…maybe ten…but then it was definitely rant-o-rama. After all, it wasn't like she really had anywhere she needed to be.

© 2011 and 2014, The Cat's Whiskers


	4. Chapter 4

**_Disclaimer_**_: Please see Part 1 Chapter 1_

**SUGAR & SPICE**

**Part 2**

Chapter 4

Ignoring 'Eelia's interminable twittering, Harmony tuned back into what 'Chignon' was saying:

"…the irony is unlike Stoker's screw-job, Tolkien's hatchet job _wouldn't_ have had that much impact long-term if he hadn't happened to write the _Lord of the Ring _books when he did, in the mid-20th Century."

"How so?"

"A few years later Gene Roddenberry brought _Star Trek _to TV."

"Huh?"

'Chignon' explained patiently. "_Star Trek_ legitimised fan fiction and boosted it to mainstream. That in turn led to fan _art_, which led to fanzines, which led to comic books which led to graphic novels. And your usual graphic novelist type is…?"

"I guess you're not looking for 'talented artistically'?" Guy suggested hopefully.

She rolled her eyes. "Usually he's a socially-retarded eternal adolescent streaming live from mom's basement. The heroine of the comic is always some long-legged wasp-waist clad in a leather bikini outfit with boobs so huge as to be physically impossible. In the real world she wouldn't be able to stand up, or even move at all, with that frontage due to the laws of physics and biology – it would be like strapping an anvil to a ten-year-olds' chest and demanding they run a marathon. The writer – and I use that term loosely – wanted to make the monsters as utterly grotesque as he could so the hero – always based on himself – had a good excuse to get laid with Miss Barrage Balloons. Not being that original of thought or plot, comic book writers plagiarised the classics for bad guys and sexed-up any description they found that remotely fitted. Thanks to Tolkien, Orcs were sitting ducks for some graphic novelists' extreme makeover, and things just got worse after poor George Lucas had to invent the special effects industry on the fly in 1977 for _Star Wars_ with Industrial Light and Magic."

At this point, however, Guy had got it. "Sure, thanks to the technology advances all the gamers and movie audiences now want – we expect - ultra-realistic animation and seamless CGI. So species like Trolls and Orcs get given even more grotesque and misshapen characteristics and people think the reality is the same. Like Sherlock Holmes didn't really have a Deerstalker hat, wear an Inverness cape, smoke a Meerschaum pipe or ever say, 'Elementary my dear Watson,' but those are the iconic images associated with him because the Strand magazine illustrator who drew the sketches for the stories featured them."

"Not bad, grasshopper – even more extraordinary as well when you realise that they actually intended to commission Sidney Paget's younger brother Walter as the Strand illustrator but just addressed the letter and envelope to Mr Paget and he opened it. Now, okay, yes, Orcs have fangs, like Trolls have lower jaw tusks – but they're both retractable, and apparently both practice immaculate dental hygiene – yellow, nicotine stained tusks you will not find on any troll, apparently. Ditto, both have claws, again, retractable. And yes, both have fur, but it's a smooth, sleek, silky pelt, not some greasy, tangled, overblown take on _Cousin It_. In fact, there was a thriving black market in Orc and Troll hides down in Rosita a few years back. There was this one Troll pelt – the fur was a beautiful silver-green, a wonderful pure aquamarine, and so soft, like baby rabbit fur, I could've stroked it forever – I would have loved to have wrapped it around me. I would have snuggled in it naked every night." She sighed wistfully at the tactile sense-memory. "I was prepared to sign over my condo, car and entire bank account for that pelt on the spot but it was pre-sold, for viewing only. Archduke Sebassis had already bought it for his throne cushion."

She rolled her eyes again as she took in Guy's disgusted expression. "Welcome to the real world; fur is forever. None of those synthetic fake furs work a damn in really cold temperatures when you need reliable warmth – trust me, been there, done that, frozen my particulars off and never going to buy anything less than a polar bear fur coat ever again – why do you think whack job groups like PETA only have a real membership in moderate climate countries like Europe and here? They were laughed out of town everywhere else."

Grinning at his huffy face she went on, "Besides, you can soothe your outrage: I said _was_ a thriving black market. It stopped thriving after that – turned out that gorgeous aquamarine pelt I would have happily bankrupted myself for was beyond rarer than rare – like Troll Royal family rare. I think the one I lusted after was the Troll King's favourite nephew before he was murdered - to order, knowing Sebassis. The Trolls teamed up with the Orcs, invited the Vashti, the Hathrak and even a few ogres to the party, and delivered an object lesson to the troll trappers _and _those of their customers who didn't have enough clout or a private army to protect them; none of whom survived the final exam, if you get my drift. Put quite a damper on the whole market…_pity_." She added the last word obviously just to provoke 'Guy', who had been looking quite cheery at this implication of Troll and Orc murderers being gruesomely slaughtered in a highly appropriate revenge.

"So, to summarise, Dracula is real but a manic-depressive bore; I really need to avoid walking on this carpet and…don't upset any Orcs – or Trolls." 'Guy' snarked. "Well, thanks for this non-billable five minutes I'll never get back."

"Oo – a bit of wit and signs of spine," Chignon gave both eyebrows the bobbing up and down treatment in exaggerated admiration. "There maybe hope of you surviving the next massacre here yet, Tate."

"Like _you _did?" Guy – 'Tate' - didn't bother to hide his scepticism that 'Chignon' was not as long-term an employee as she made out she was.

"Why, yes, actually." She smirked at the challenge in Guy's voice. "Tell you what, you're young and faintly cute in a dumb puppy kind of way and well, I haven't got anything worthwhile to do right now so," she leaned in, "I'll do you a favour and tell you how I survived the monster mash last year, without ending up as a brain-eating living dead gal."

"Hit me," Tate folded his arms across his chest in challenge.

"_Seriously?_ Words never to say in _this _building," 'Chignon' warned. "Listen and learn, grasshopper. It's because I live by three rules. One: I learn my history, so I don't repeat the mistakes made by those who came before me. Two: I never, ever panic. Three - and apparently I'm quoting the words of the Blue Meanie to Our Glorious Leader Angel the Angst-Ridden here, I serve no master but my own ambition."

There was silence for a beat, then two, then uncomfortable.

"Well?" she prompted.

"I'm listening to learn."

"_Touché_," for the first time she looked vaguely approving of him. "So, Rule One: did I know Lava Boy was coming, specifically? No. Did I know _something_ was coming – yeahsureyoubetcha. The Senior Partners do a 'review' every 75 years, so I read up on the process and past reviews – this time they were twitchy, even for _them_, and that was well before Angel gate-crashed the party and took out their demon host arrival 'limousine' as it were. So after that debacle when I saw twitchier looming on the horizon I activated my laptop's link to the security system and kept it on the lobby. So when Horned 'n' Hooved strode in and did serious damage to the marble flooring, I saw what _had to be_ happening from the very first second. To put it in middle-management speak: preparation prevents piss-poor performance."

"And that meant you were able to follow Rule Two," Tate was still heavy on the sarcasm.

"Of course; thanks to Rule One, I recognised the thing. Care to guess _how_?" she not-quite-taunted.

He pursed his lips and Harmony bit down an impulse to jump in and go, _I know, I know _–

"This is a pan-dimensional law firm, ergo, pan dimensional _archives_." Tate unwittingly stole Harmony's thunder.

'Chignon's' smile actually hovered in the region of genuine. "Exactly. The Vampire With A Soul who plays a pivotal role in the Apocalypse, but whether for good or evil, nobody knows, tends to make mystical types very, very nervous. So when the firm made Angel our new CEO, I went a bit OCD on Rule One. That weird woman – Jasmine – who tried to turn us all into shiny, happy-clappy people – magically expunged all record of her pet Hulk from _this_ dimension –"

"But didn't bother with many others," Tate nodded.

"Angelus's encounter with The Beast on a Prussian battlefield in 1789 was recorded in gruesome detail, with high-quality sketches, before the Svearan priestesses banished it from this reality and Jasmine picked it as her Go-To Goon…goodness knows why. So when Beastie Boy kicked in the ground floor lobby, Rule Two kicked in because thanks to Rule One, I knew two things. First, that The Beast was made of _lava_. That's pumice, and no way will I ever be killed by something I use after my bath to buff my dainty size four feet soft and smooth."

_Nuh-uh, those feet are your flaw, lady – size six wide – and, I think, flat._ Harmony expertly judged, but then again, given the general delectability of the overall package, that one minor failure of genetics could be excused – no 'guy', regardless of species, admiring that half-moon ass or those lush grapefruit bosoms was going to quibble over a pair of feet a Hobbit would admire. From a vampire's dinner perspective she herself would happily eat 'Chignon' as a tasty treat of _filet mignon_ when a lot of people were barely above Big Mac status. Hastily she tuned back in.

"…and second, that back when the Beast was banished in 1789, electricity was still science-fiction, not science-fact. So not only was Lava Boy so huge he couldn't even fit an arm inside an elevator, he didn't even know what one _was_. So, Rule Three kicked in."

"Serve no master but your own ambition?"

She shrugged. "Everyone else was running around like a headless chicken, trying to save themselves, save files, even save Mesektet for the Senior Partners – that was the Conduit at that time. Now it's a panther for some reason." She shrugged again, a deep rolling of the shoulders that made her breasts bounce and Tate's eyes followed them in a pure 'Pavlovian response' though what dessert meringue nests had to do with anything, Harmony wasn't sure. "Go figure. I preferred Mesektet, even if she was as mad as a bagful of bees and a really creepy kid."

"The Conduit for the Senior Partners was a child?" Tate expressed both his and Harmony's surprise. "And _you _got to meet her…it?"

"A demon disguised as a little girl, best I could gather, though that wasn't entirely accurate either. Apparently there were several of them in a group called the Ra-Tet; sounded like a 1960s-era all-girl band to me, to be honest – they were siblings of some sort. Let's just say I would've _hated_ to meet _their_ parents – even in broad daylight and backed up by Archduke Sebassis' 40,000-strong army all toting rocket launchers. And it's not Conduit_ for_ or _to _it's the Conduit _between_…the Conduit does not work for, is not subordinate to the SPs…I think it's more powerful. The 'current' conduit at any one time is an - entity, I guess - that_ chooses_ to perform that function. I don't know why, and after I was once picked as part of a quarterly Terror I've made it a point to avoid all knowledge of the Conduit."

"Terror?" Tate looked nervous.

"Relax, they don't have them any more, they were Holland Manners' thing, although possibly quite a good idea. Maybe I'll suggest reintroducing them," 'Chignon' smiled at Tate in a way guaranteed to make any sane person gulp – he was smart enough to pale slightly and swallow hard.

'Chignon' carried on, "Every three months Holland Manners took a select group of new or junior young lawyers to the White Room. They were each allowed to bring an intern, clerk, secretary, assistant or whatever to hold their briefs while they genuflected – or discreetly supply a clean pair of briefs when terror got the best of their bowels, half the time. I was way in back at the time, still an intern to…don't even remember his name…white, wealthy, fat and flabby…and I was smart enough to stay there. I was right at the back of the group as we all trooped back into the elevator on Holland's heels – everyone else was jabbing elbows to get to stand next to Mr Manners Sir, when this little girl is suddenly standing right beside me."

"What happened?" Tate asked, with obvious envy.

"She said: _Follow the rules, and you will survive to be Queen of the Green that you covet and enjoy it for all your life_."

"Huh? What rules?"

'Chignon' rolled her eyes. "I repeat: 'mad as a bagful of bees' – completely bonkers. Who cares what _rules_? Besides, the only thing I have ever, _ever _coveted was that delicious aquamarine Troll pelt, and I don't think there's a lot of mileage in being Sovereign of a hearth-rug. Anyway, to focus, Rule Three – I serve my own ambition, which I'm careful to ensure doesn't _exist_. The key to surviving Wolfram & Hart, and pretty much anything else, is not to want it so much you can't do with out it, or so much that you will do stupid things and risk your health, wealth and life to get it or keep it. I don't aspire to be the fastest, richest, prettiest, best, most famous, most fashionable, most philanthropic, most misanthropic, et cetera. I don't covet cars, jewels, cash, gold, drugs, booze, sex, boy toys, playgirls or anything else."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning I travel light. My whole life will fit into a single grocery-store bag, if I need it to – even if I'd been able to buy that troll pelt hearth-rug. I believe there is nothing in this world worth killing over, and precious few things worth dying for; certainly nothing _here_." She shrugged to emphasise her point, and it was testimony to how seriously 'Tate' was taking her advice that his attention never left her face, despite those magnificent mammaries that bounced as she rolled her shoulders. "It's how I was able to avoid the standard perpetuity clause."

"I thought I was the only one who neg-" 'Tate' stopped abruptly as he realised he had let slip his 'big secret', a look of masculine chagrin on his face at blurting something he could have used at a later date to 'impress' the lady.

"Apart from me, you probably are," 'Chignon' conceded, her tone less abrasive than it had been. "The thing is ninety-nine point nine percent of people – or whatever species it is – know what they're signing up to but always think it'll never happen to them, or that what they get out of it is worth the risk. Sometimes they're nearly right. Holland Manners lasted fifty years at this law firm and didn't age a day which made his lifestyle a Master Class in dodging the bullets – at least until Angel went Dark Side for a while. My salary is lower, my perks fewer, my benefits don't extend beyond employment and my caseload is triple that of my colleagues at this management level, but if I died tomorrow, I'd stay dead. No being the SPs' puppet until a week past the end of eternity because I'd let my head get turned by the luxury condo or Tiffany's pink diamond spring sale."

"And that's also what let you escape Wolfram & Hart when the Beast thing was killing everything that moved?" 'Tate's' voice wavered between scepticism and eager curiosity.

"In a word: yes. I have no baggage, literally or metaphysically," once again she shrugged that magnificent bosom, this time causing Tate to take a second to admire the view, but he was paying attention as she carried on, "so by the time Big and Beastly had even finished smashing through the lobby's front doors, I was way ahead of it – "

"Literally _and_ metaphysically I take it?"

"Oh yeah; I picked up my purse, I went to the kitchen. I stole some vamp's bag of O-Neg lunch and microwaved it to body temperature just in case I needed to dab on a little _eau de haemoglobin_ to make me look part of any general _esprit de corpse_ theme, then went straight to the elevators. By the time the Beast was storming up the stairs to the second floor, I was inside an elevator and heading _down_ for the lobby. To cater to the sensibilities of the undead staff, hardly any Wolfram & Hart elevators have any mirrored panels or reflective surfaces, so I just crouched on the floor with my back against the side panel so I wasn't visible if and when the doors slid back. Even if the elevator did open on every floor going down, anyone or _anything_ glancing inside would see what appeared to be an empty pinging box – the beastie didn't understand or care what it was, even if it had happened to be at the elevators on every floor to notice it."

Having been following this tale he suddenly frowned, "But what about the security system? I thought Wolfram & Hart went into lockdown when under attack, so the elevators would shut down too."

"Absolutely right, they would – they did, eventually. But like I said, Rule One: As soon as I'd read up on that lava thing in the archives of one of Wolfram & Hart's other dimensional offices, I took a week's leave and paid privately for a building electrics maintenance course, just in case. I _also_ carry around in my purse a miniature toolkit in a rather fetching hot-pink carry case, if I do say so myself. When Lava Beast attacked this building, everyone else – including the oh-so-awesome Lilah Morgan and her toady Gavin Park by the way – went into default mode and avoided the elevators, which were in _fact_ the safest places to be in the whole building, because anyone inside them when the building went into lock down was effectively safe inside because the rock thing had no comprehension what an elevator was and didn't try to open what it didn't realise were doors."

Tate raised both his eyebrows, apparently unable to do the Vulcan thing. "So, to misquote _Aladdin,_ ultimate cosmic power…itty bitty brain?"

'Chignon' actually smiled at him – properly.

"Pretty much, actually. Although I hereby give due credence to sheer good luck - if Jasmine, whatever she was, had had the common sense to understand that great power and great intelligence aren't the same thing, she would have realised she needed to go for brain over brawn and pick a lieutenant who had moved with the times and who knew how the 21st Century actually worked, and it would have been a whole different story."

"A lava monster with an actual IQ, who knew what elevators were, would have put a serious crimp in your escape plan," Tate agreed, seeing her point.

"You're not wrong. Fortunately Jasmine ignored Rule One just like most everyone – or everything, depending on species – seems to. I actually got the idea for the Great Elevator Escape straight from reading the archives too. There's an unkillable demon called 'The Judge' – "

"The Judge? _Quelle _pretentious."

"Again, you're not wrong, especially considering he-stroke-it is big, blue and so dense light bends round him. Probably a brother of Lava Boy, come to think of it. Anyhow, his MO was to burn humans into cinders from the inside out just by touching them; he was last stopped during the Crusades when over 150 Champions of Light – Knights Templar, I think – ganged up and sacrificed themselves to hack it to pieces and scatter it around the globe."

"Until someone brought all the pieces back together again," Tate promptly asserted in a, '_I know that's a no-brainer_' tone.

"None other than Angelus – he got to do a reprise of his greatest hits in Sunnydale for a while after Buffy Summers unwittingly de-soulled Angel by giving him some perfect happiness, or a great big orgasm, to be post-modern about it."

"So how'd they stop it?" Tate asked, obviously like Harmony not seeing the connection between The Judge and the Lava Monster's lack of knowledge about electricity and elevators.

"Simple, they scattered the pieces. Buffy Summers the Vampire Slayer blew it to bits with a rocket launcher in the middle of the local shopping mall, which is not my point. My point is that The Judge stood there and _let her_ because it had no idea what modern US military firepower can consist of and didn't understand the threat – unlike Angelus and Drusilla who took one look and made like gophers for their holes."

"And The Judge is now back in bits."

"More like crumbs. The Knights only had the tech to hack it into six pieces, our compulsively over-achieving Slayer blasted it into about a thousand micro-fragments and had the pieces scattered across land and _sea_. Smart girl. Speaking of which, Lilah Morgan was obsessed with the whole Angelus/Angel _Shanshu_ prophecy deal – probably got that from her old buddy Lindsey McDonald, wherever he is – so she should really have had the same inspiration that I had – "

"Which was that you could probably get past The Beast without breaking a sweat if you just hid in the elevators?"

"Yahtzee. I made sure I could have jury-rigged the control panel to keep it going after the building went into lock down, but as it happened, I didn't need to apply my elevator-maintenance skills. I actually got out about half a minute before the lock-down kicked in – triggered when Fraggle Rock hit the fourth floor, I think. I simply stepped out of the elevator, strolled through the slaughter and out through the gaping hole where the front doors used to be before the shutters came down and before any nasty zombie stuff started."

"You literally just walked out?"

"I spent the afternoon reading the paper and enjoying a nice Frappuccino across the plaza." 'Chignon' wrapped up. "Went back in and used my poor late boss's still logged-on PC to put through that promotion to my current office she'd never gotten around to submitting –"

"Ah-huh." His tone was dry and admiringly amused.

"Believe me, I could have done worse. The late Lilah Morgan, who is surprisingly enough about the only genuinely _lamented_ employee Wolfram & Hart's ever had in this dimension, achieved _her _promotion by decapitating her immediate boss, Linwood Murrow, at a morning staff meeting then taking charge as his head bounced down the table. And yes, I did have a bit of a 'man-crush' - well you know what I mean – on her – you've _got _to admire that kind of 'psychopathic with style and panache' attitude. It's also rumoured that she _also_ got rid of Nathan Reed."

"Nathan Reed?" Tate asked warily, clearly smart enough to know she wasn't making casual conversation and that he was being given a fairly unsubtle warning that it would be best for his health to direct any ambitions he had for career advancement by stepping into 'dead men's shoes' towards _other _department managers.

"Hum, yes. Holland Manners' blink-n-you-miss-him replacement – officially he's on sabbatical, which is possible but about as likely as Jack the Ripper being elected Man of the Year by the Women's Institute. Anyway, to get back to my point, then I carried on regardless; nobody noticed. That's the thing about lawyers – we all look the same to anything except our own ego. Anyhow, you've achieved enlightenment grasshopper. Much good may it do you." 'Chignon' tapped her expensive but tasteful Miki Moto Pearl watch significantly. "My appointment is here – remember, billable hours, kid."

Brought back to herself, Harmony realised that even 'Eelia' had wound down and was smiling at her expectantly and…_oh no, that clock is wrong. Ah…_


	5. Chapter 5

**_Disclaimer_**_: Please see Part 1 Chapter 1_

Yet again I profoundly apologise for the delay – I am dealing with ill health and a new job role so my intended schedule to post this story has gone by the way. I will post a.s.a.p.

**SUGAR & SPICE**

**Part 2**

**Chapter 5**

Pelting across the outer lobby of Angel's office, Harmony threw herself in her chair, the momentum carrying her behind her desk, but not needing to breathe she was able to smile chirpily as if she'd been there for a good half-hour when Angel bossy stomped past like a vampire with an impacted fang – for a moment he seemed to hesitate as if about to stop and bawl her out, but then carried on…s_tomp, stomp, stomp, slam._

Harmony winced as the door shivered and listened…_ stomp, stomp, creak..._ Angel sitting down in his chair…_sha-sha..._shifting to get comfortable against the leather…_drr-drr-drr…_drumming his fingers on the desk top…_silence…_

Ah, the pre-brooding window of opportunity. Harmony, having poured Angel's mug of blood while listening to his progress, jumped up with the mug in one hand and the papers in the other. Not today, General Grumpy-Pants; okay, she was a _bit _late, but she could either spend the day tiptoeing around Mr Tall, Dark & Dreary or she could be super-efficient and maximise the time spent with Cordy tonight.

No contest – Angel was just going to have to get with the programme.

Reaching out a finger to the intercom, Angel looked up as Harmony entered, and blinked as she marched up to his desk and deposited his mug on his desk with none of her usual sashaying, gabbling or flapping. A flick of her wrist somehow spread the documents neatly in front of him in a display-case-worthy 'fan' pattern.

"Sign there, there, there – and there – by ten o'clock as they need to go by rapid delivery mail at noon. You have an eleven o'clock brunch meeting with the Obu delegation; that's the agenda and the Minutes of the last meeting."

Having rattled all this off like a machine gun, Harmony whirled and was gone. Angel blinked and shook his head as the door shut behind her, feeling as if he had just fallen down the rabbit hole, again. She'd been channelling Miss Manners, Martha Stewart and the entire IRS in one go. Realising that he'd automatically picked up his mug and was now holding it foolishly in mid-air whilst staring into space Angel discarded his notion of calling her back and demanding an explanation for Hitler Harmony as the aroma wafted under his nose.

His face tightening, Angel took a savouring sip and leaned back in his chair, staring moodily into the mug. He knew Wesley had been surprised (and relieved) when Angel had requested that Wesley go back to putting his blood in the flask rather than Angel feeding directly from him. Fortunately for Angel, Wesley had bought his explanation that he didn't want anyone, least of all Marcus Hamilton or the still-as-yet-unknown poisoner adding the Luaric to the blood, tumbling to what was going on.

It was a genuine concern, and in this case, entirely phoney. Angel drank more deeply, savouring the flavour, even though microwaving could never replace the rich taste of blood fresh from the vein. In truth, Angel was no longer sure of his ability to control himself if he fed directly from Wesley. Harmony, with unusual perception, had got it right at the Hyperion when she had pointed out that Spike had quintessentially always _been_ Spike, with a soul or without one. Angel, however, faced a titanic battle everyday with the monster inside.

Angelus was always there, underneath everything. What had Buffy said about the First? _From Beneath It Devours. _Oh yeah; Angelus was constantly pushing, testing, twisting, turning, sliding, coiling, pressing always against the abhorred soul in an attempt to break through, break out.

Vampires did not sleep in the human manner, but they did need to rest regularly. Maintaining the human façade took a lot of mystical whammy and expenditure of effort and energy. The older the vampire, the more effort it took to be able to walk about in human disguise amongst the unsuspecting prey. As Wesley had pointed out, The Master, Kakistos and The Prince of Lies, amongst others, hadn't looked that way out of choice, and were it not for Angel's soul…But more effort required more recuperation.

But that was when Angel was most vulnerable to Angelus; when he was relaxed, resting, recharging his strength. That was when Angelus surged most strongly forward; sending horrendous images before Angel's mind's eye, whispering and taunting his alter ego with all the things he had done, would do, once someone managed to banish the soul once more…which they would, the demon tormented. As for Wesley, he could be a true son of Angelus, instead of that weakling Spike who had spurned everything he should be first for the Slayer, now for Angel. Wesley would make a superb Sireling; only nerds like Andrew Wells used that ridiculous child-with-an-e or pronounced vampire to rhyme with _fear_…although on that last point…

His hand tightened on the handle. In Angel's weaker moments Angelus had been able to push forward into his waking consciousness, and unfortunately that included when Angel had been feeding. One day a few weeks back Wesley's phone had shrilled while Angel was feeding and the ex-Watcher had twitched as the noise startled him. In automatic response Angel had clutched at him so as to prevent him escaping and clamped down with his teeth to hold Wesley in position. For a microsecond of a microsecond Angelus had surged forward, striving to sink his fangs deep. Of course it had all been smoothed over in half-second flat with Wesley brushing off Angel's flustered apologies and Spike laying into Angel for his jumpiness.

But Angel alone knew just how close he had come to losing control to Angelus, and that couldn't be allowed, even for a split-second of time. Now, every time he closed his eyes or let his guard down for a second, Angelus was there, gloating and sneering, bombarding him with lurid images of the torture he would inflict on Wesley, agony upon agony, to drive him insane as he had driven Drusilla, everything Angelus was capable of that used to make Spike beg for more…or mercy, depending on Angelus's mood. Wesley was dangerous enough in his current Illyria-induced emotional instability, never mind as a crazed vampire son of Angelus.

Angel literally jumped out of his introspection as the door of his office was flung open so vigorously it visibly vibrated and Harmony marched in again, with another wad of papers and another round of rapid-fire instructions. Angel placed the mug back on the desk firmly; Harmony seemed to have forgotten who the boss and who the secretary was around here. Opening his mouth to start demanding an explanation for the 'tude, he never got there as the phone rang on his desk.

Not his office phone; the _other_ phone. The Sunnydale hotline phone…the Bat-phone. Angel picked it up gingerly; he'd tried to resist calling it that, but had yielded to the inevitable within an hour…"Giles? What's happened…?"

Angel listened as Giles explained the situation before ringing off; Harmony, with her vampire-hearing didn't need the conversation repeating – with wide eyes she simply turned and hurried out to summon the gang. Angel straightened in his chair as within minutes Harmony returned accompanied by Spike and followed in short order by Gunn, Lorne, Wesley and…Illyria. Angel made another addition to his mental To-Do list: to see if he could figure out why Illyria was so full frontal these days when before – or at least since she'd manifested Fred to deal with the Burkles' surprise visit – Illyria had been usually content to let Fred have the spotlight as its interface with this time and place.

"What's happened?" Wesley asked, his gaze going to the bat-phone.

"Giles just called. Someone tried to kill Dawn again." Angel stated baldly.

"Demon?" growled Spike.

"Human contractor," Angel bit out, "which is why he came damn close to succeeding…Dawn's okay though," he hastily reassured his grandson as Spike looked haunted.

"They killed the assassin." Illyria didn't need to make it a question.

"Luckily Philip Hewitt was spotted breaking into Buffy's new house," Angel answered obliquely, "by Spike's friend, Clem and…C-Connor Riley…" brushing over the stumble in his own voice and not noticing the flicker of Wesley's eyes, Angel continued, "…so Clem and – Connor - were waiting for Buffy when everyone got back and let them in on it, so Buffy and Willow were ready when Hewitt made his attempt."

"But aren't they right back at square one if they killed Hewitt before they got out of him who hired him?" Gunn pointed out.

"They didn't get the chance." Angel replied grimly. "When they cornered him, Hewitt committed suicide with a cyanide pill."

Lorne was scowling into the middle distance. "Hewitt…Hewitt…no, can't be, not suicide…"

"Actually it was; that's why Giles called m- us." Angel told Lorne.

"And translated into English that means…?" Gunn interposed snippily into Angel and Lorne's private tangential exchange.

"If it _is_ that Philip Hewitt, there's no way he would have killed himself." Lorne stated with puzzlement but conviction. "Trust me, Hewitt could give hard core demon clans a run for their money in viciousness and the only thing he held sacred was himself. Anyone less likely to deliberately take their own life is hard to imagine…"

"Yeah, that's what Clem said too," Angel acknowledged, "that Hewitt was far too egotistical to commit suicide, that in a tight spot he would see the world destroyed around him to save his own skin. When Hewitt killed himself Willow couldn't get the look on his face out of her head. Apparently she said he died with this look of helpless fury and shock on his face as if he was desperately fighting against what he was doing, so Willow did…

"A mystical autopsy, for want of a better description?" as he sought for the words, Wesley made the suggestion in a tone that indicated a certain familiarity with an 'unorthodox' application of the forensic sciences.

"It'll do," Angel agreed, "anyway Willow found that Hewitt was under a geis."

"A guess what?" Harmony blurted.

"A _geis_, an imposed compulsion or duty to complete some task." Wesley explained.

Angel nodded, "It seems that whoever employed Hewitt managed to put him under a compulsion _without_ Hewitt realising it, just in case Hewitt _was_ cornered in his attempt. Since he didn't know about it, Hewitt had no defences against the geis when it was triggered in the second of time he had."

"That's some mean mojo, Angel," Lorne said, his concern clearly evident by the way he _didn't _compare anyone to tasty confectionaries. "It takes a lot of deep and dark whammy to lay something like that on a person, even more so if they don't know it's been done to them, especially a seasoned nasty like Hewitt."

"Couldn't you, like, just hypnotise them?" Harmony protested.

Lorne shook his head, "Nuh-uh, cinnamon bun. Look, forget those James Bond movies or episodes of _Murder, She Wrote_. Sure, you can hypnotise someone to bark like a chicken or cluck like a dog, but the human brain is one of the most convoluted and contrary contraptions in any dimension. At the risk of kicking the Humanism egomania into higher gear around here, those few ounces of grey mush inside your skull are one of the major reasons why _this_ dimension, _this_ actual planet, as the origin place of the various species of human beings, is the destination of choice for so many demon species, including those that can turn humans into vampires. As well as the tasty eatin', the way human brains work means you are extremely adaptable and survival oriented - even in what appears to be the most hopeless of circumstances, odds are your human being tends to be the survivor and more importantly thriver. But regardless, you can't hypnotise someone to go against their basic nature. All those spook-shows where harmless old granny is mesmerised into murdering someone just doesn't wash."

"Yeah, like that _Babylon 5_ episode where the cyborg ignored all these people going past it until it infested the guy who was willing to kill." Gunn mused aloud.

He glared defensively as everyone looked at him.

"Hey that was a great show," enthused Lorne, "and you're bang on the nail. Okay, so some of these really nasty spook-types like your CIA and the KGB could turn someone into a killer automaton but the key word would be _automaton_. The victim would be so badly damaged that they'd never be able to pass for remotely functional in normal life."

"So someone went to an awful lot of time, trouble and expenditure to ensure that Hewitt couldn't blab." Spike summarised. "His boss was cunning."

"Or desperate…" Wesley said slowly, grimly. "It would cost a large fortune to lay a compulsion of suicide against someone like Hewitt, all to kill one little human girl. Why go to such trouble?"

The question hung in the air, thickening it.

Angel bit the bullet, "It must be because whoever hired Hewitt realised that we would instantly know who they were – or at least where to find them – if Hewitt talked."

Nobody looked at each other and especially nobody looked at Angel as the implication that Dawn's enemy was someone they all knew hung like LA smog in the room.

His mouth pursed in recognition of their wariness. "Willow is trying to backtrack the geis to whichever warlock laid it on Hewitt; Wes' would you call her and see if you can help? Let's all see if we can find some leads for Buffy and the others to get a hold of."

With soft murmurs they began to rise, but Lorne waggled a hand, "Er, Angel-cake, not to be indelicate, but has anyone checked out the kid?"

"Who?" Angel was blank.

Lorne rolled his ruby-hued eyes. "Dawn's boyfriend – and that's what he is folks – Connor Riley."

Rage at Lorne's implication rushed through Angel so fast that for a moment his head swam. "Connor is on our side, he's not a suspect!"

Lorne backed off raising both hands in the air in the universal conciliatory gesture. "Whoa! Easy, big guy, just covering all the bases! I'm just saying that we shouldn't forget Dawn the fawn's track record here – first boyfriend, vampire, second boyfriend, demonic assassin…"

_Third boyfriend, my son,_ Angel bit his lip, hard.

"The kid's okay…" Spike put in seeing but not understanding his grandsire's perturbation. "I checked him out, trust me he's no threat to Dawn."

The others relaxed; Spike's attachment to the Slayer's sister – understandable since it transpired he had been _Dawn's_ Champion and not Buffy's – was deep and sincere. Anyone who constituted a danger to Spike's Niblet would have ended up very messily dead.

As they all filed out Angel felt an almost overwhelming urge to blurt out the truth – everything about the Circle of the Black Thorn, who Connor really was, what had really happened last year – but he locked his jaw against himself and absorbed the pain of their wary suspicion. If he was going to have a hope in hell of taking down the Circle, timing was everything.

Besides, just as much as they were worried about him, so too Angel dare not confide in one of them – just in case. Look how none of them, including even him, had ever suspected that Cordelia _wasn't_ Cordelia, yet for nigh on half a year the essence that was Cordelia Chase had been unconscious and unaware while Jasmine operated her body as if driving a car, just as vampires used human bodies to live in.

Gunn had already proven that even someone as street-smart as him could be duped; Wesley was still living far too near full-on crazy; Illyria was only concerned with Illyria, and Lorne's spun-glass veneer of cheer combined with his current habit of apparently having a sea breeze glued to one hand showed he simply wasn't up to having yet _another _angst-fest dumped on him…

_Continued in Chapter Six…_

© 2009 & 2011, The Cat's Whiskers


	6. Chapter 6

**_Disclaimer_**_: Please see Part 1 Chapter 1_

**SUGAR & SPICE**

**Part 2**

Chapter 6

"Two million! Two _million_! And the little bitch is still alive!" The words were shrieked out in a banshee howl accompanied by the shattering of expensive _Sevres_ crockery against the walls.

Ffion Wilkes-Booth Wyndham-Pryce watched her husband's ranting and pacing with amused anticipation. Anticipation because sex with Nigel was always best in the aftermath of one of his psychotic rage fits. Amusement because…as he hurtled himself about the exclusive London Belgravia flat with his fists waving and his podgy face purple with fury, squealing and ranting, he resembled nothing so much as a petulant toddler having a temper-tantrum; the maternal urge to give him a good smack at the back of his legs and send him to his room was strong.

However, Ffion also watched her new husband's moods and routines like a hawk for future reference. Nigel Wyndham-Pryce was vicious, but weak; an unfortunate combination of personality traits. She noted the congested ochre of his sweating face – when it came time to dispose of Nigel, nobody would question a sudden heart attack, or brain aneurysm despite his relatively young age; he was only twenty-eight at the moment…going on eighteen months right now.

Still, she had a dinner meeting at six; time to feed and wind him. "So we'll just be up-front about it."

Nigel stumbled to a halt, his breathing rasping in a chest that was unused to such exertion; Nigel's daily exercise tended to consist of a leisurely stroll to his London club in time for a two-hour mostly liquid lunch with his father or a bunch of Watcher cronies.

"Up-front?" he repeated, his eyes widening as she smirked. "You don't mean…a frontal assault?"

"Yes I do mean exactly that." Ffion stood up from the _chaise longue_ and quickly unbuttoned her new silk blouse, carefully laying it across a nearby table so it wouldn't get torn or wrinkled.

For a moment Nigel remained fixated on her _Ann Summers_ silk and lace bra then he managed to get out, "But that's suicide – to just walk up to the little cow and obliterate her –"

"Not obliterate, dear, shoot…or stab, it doesn't really matter." Ffion unbuttoned her skirt at the back and laid it next to the blouse; she really didn't want them mussing up as she wouldn't have time to go to her own flat and change before going to the meeting. Not that Nigel, or anyone else, knew about that abode; it had been purchased under an assumed name years before in a much less salubrious area of London, where those of a 'Ffion Wilkes-Booth' social echelon would never be found. 'Tracy McArdle' was a never-seen ubiquitous benefits scrounger who had the rare virtue of paying all her bills by direct debit and whose neighbours made it a habit to neither notice nor care about other residents' comings and goings.

"No magic…?" murmured Nigel thoughtfully, even as he moved closer, his already flushed face heating again with lust, "Just a guy with a gun?"

"It worked on John Lennon, and Gianni Versace, and very nearly President Reagan and the Pope." Ffion pointed out. "I mean, we've made two attempts by mystical means to get rid of our little obstacle, and both have failed. What's more, the dreary so-called Slayer Queen is now on guard against mystical murder. No unknown entity that even has so much of a whiff of paranormal power will get anywhere near Dawn Summers without the entire Scooby Gang pouncing…" Ffion stopped and grimaced, "…did I just say Scooby Gang out loud? Ugh!"

Her theatrical shiver enticed Nigel the last few steps to her and he raised his hands to the front-hooks of her brassiere, fumbling them undone. "You really think it could work if we just hired someone to walk up to her and shoot her?"

"Maybe not walk up to her with a gun," Ffion conceded, removing Nigel's clip-on tie for him. "But maybe a drive-by shooting or a sniper shot. Buffy Summers and the – her friends – are used to dealing with _mystical_ evil. They're fully protected against pan-dimensional bogeymen, but not _bullets_. The one time someone actually had the IQ to go after Buffy Summers with a gun, he succeeded – her wound was fatal and he got that stupid Tara Mac-whatever witch outright."

Remembered shock penetrated even Nigel's lust, "But- Willow Rosenberg – she skinned Warren Meers _alive_ and then _burned him to death!_"

Ffion patted his arm reassuringly. "It's not the same thing dear. Besides, without Willow's intervention, Buffy Summers would have died – again. That's the problem with having access to mystical solutions. We've been over-thinking this problem and coming up with over-complicated solutions. So, we go back to basics: one guy; one gun; one dead girl."

Nigel nodded eagerly, moving in close as Ffion hitched herself up on the table and leaned herself backwards, pulling him on top of her. Not that he was resisting; Ffion had quickly realised that Nigel had a _thing_ for doing it on tables. He'd had plenty of practice from all the secretaries he'd literally had on his desk-top, but a minor mystical truth charm in a bottle of wine and a bit of parlour-trick hypnosis Nigel didn't even remember had easily got her to the bottom of Nigel's unexpectedly adventurous quirk.

As usual with Nigel, all roads led back to Wesley – sneaking away from a relative's house back to his own home one time when his parents were away, Nigel had crept into the silent, supposedly empty Wyndham-Pryce London family home. Hearing odd noises he had crept in and witnessed a 'ringside view' of his elder brother and Wesley's then girlfriend Clarissa Travers 'celebrating' their respectively being made that year's Watcher Academy Head Boy and Head Girl - _in flagrante delicto_ on top of the Wyndham-Pryce dining room table.

As a example of peerless craftsmanship it excelled, and also as a 'statement' it went beyond mere furniture, being a massive, solid-mahogany half-tonne twenty-seater antique passed down through the Howard family since the 16th Century, permanently loaned to Nigel's mother by her brother the 15th Earl of Roxleigh. Roger and Honoria Wyndham-Pryce had routinely held sumptuous dinner parties showcasing the ornate dynastic table for fellow Watcher families in their clique, which Wesley as their eldest son had been obligated to attend.

Nigel under hypnosis had cheerfully confided that was why he had no doubt Wesley had chosen the dining table instead of one of the townhouse's elegantly appointed bedrooms as a very private revenge against his father. At that point Nigel had started to drool so she sent him into a deep sleep, implanting a false memory of an evening of wine and sex with her and instructing him to wake up happy and refreshed.

Even now, the memory made her smile; as a girl, on so many occasions after that time she had been dancing attendance with her parents at those interminable dinner parties, and had never understood why their older boy Wesley Wyndham-Pryce had gone from being a pale-faced button-downed fellow sufferer to…well, 'secretly smiling' was the only way she had been able to describe it to herself. No wonder, if every time he watched Roger W-P slurping his soup and pretentiously critiquing the salad he was able to buoy himself up in the knowledge that his far-from dear father was eating his meal on the exact spot where Wesley had bent that cow Clarissa Travers over like a cheap Soho hooker and _rogered_ her like a prize Holstein bull servicing a heifer. Bet her dear daddy the late Quentin Travers had never known anything about that little escapade of his darling girl. Clarissa had always acted the ice queen but she'd been ridden more than a Grand National winner long before Wesley got anywhere near her and not always by the human contingent – She knew for a fact that a romp with horde of Echo Gnomes had got Clarissa an A+ in 'A' Level Multidimensional Arithmomancy when the girl hadn't cracked the syllabus textbook that year never minded _revised_ the exam.

And, of course, Nigel's obsessive need to best his brother in any way possible had promptly added that new kink to his psyche…Ffion gave a genuine purr of pleasure as she imagined Wesley Wyndham-Pryce's hands on her now. Wesley had that dark river in him, that vein of ruthless pragmatism that flowed strongly also in Angel, and Rupert Giles…but so few others, such as Nigel who utterly lacked it. Wesley…with his smoke-and-steel gaze that cut right through you, sharp as broken glass…

If only he didn't also have that integrity, that honour, that duty; Wesley had remained true to what the Watchers _should_ have been before they abandoned their duty in pursuit of power and prestige. It was such a pity, they could have ruled the world together; Ffion licked her lips as she thought of all that tamped down power that Nigel and even his father were too blind to see, that constant iron self-control he used to plug the seething and churning volcano deep within. So strong yet so contained; there was nothing soft about Wesley, _his_ arms would be firm not spongy to the grip, his body would be taut and lean, not doughy and flabby.

Ffion arched with pleasure as she played the fantasy in her head – Wesley crumpled at her feet next to one – no, two - little piles of dust, ex-Angel and ex-Spike, as well the butchered remains of Charles Gunn, the Pylean Lorne and that skinny little nothing Fred Burkle or whatever-demon. It was easy enough to get something equivalent to a human-attuned version of the Staff of Deva-Sin on the pan-dimensional black market, and she would turn his body into a marionette for her use and ride him there on the concrete while he had no will to prevent her, a foot away from the gutted carcass of his love – Ffion cried out as she climaxed hard before slumping back on the table and gasping, for a moment actually startled to feel Nigel's flesh against her own as he pushed himself off and to one side.

Sliding off the table, Ffion hurried into the bathroom and had a quick shower before redressing, easily able to soothe Nigel into compliance now he'd got what he wanted and by showing a pretty attitude of apology for her evening meeting. Even as she stepped out of the flat into the corridor, he was completely forgotten; thanks to a little suggestion charm reinforced by a regularly topped dose of some good old-fashioned scientific hypnotic pharmaceuticals, Nigel would flop down in front of the TV and be snoring within the hour. Ffion's meeting would also not be that long and she could then go home ready for Hadley…

She smiled to herself; Hadley Benton was pompous, patronising and pedantic. He was also tall, handsome and had the musculature of a young Arnold Schwarzenegger. Most importantly of all, Hadley was part of the Council's inner circle by virtue of being the nephew of the late Quentin Travers. Almost as good was his monumental density. The glamour Ffion used to make him think she was the 'Melanie Griffiths' lookalike' blonde tramp 'Tracy MacArdle' was cheap and easy to see through, yet Hadley didn't suspect a thing.

Like a good dog he would trot back to her flat with her tonight, just as he had so many nights before, and even as he deliciously thrust into her like a stevedore on steroids, he would be reciting everything he knew – and completely unaware that he was doing so thanks to a little African charm Ffion had picked up. When she was done, Ffion used the memory enchantments to send him trotting off home while she played back the tape recorders in the bedroom for whatever was usable. Hadley Benton got out of bed every morning feeling fresh and important and firmly convinced that he left these meetings and went straight home, watched the news and then retired to bed at a sensible hour after a nightcap.

Ffion drew in a deep lungful of the crisp night air; as long as he kept his stellar physique, Hadley would make a fine second husband. Oh, she was going to be so happy when that little Summers brat was six feet under…

_Continued in Chapter 7…_

© 2012, The Cat's Whiskers


	7. Chapter 7

**_Disclaimer_**_: Please see Part 1 Chapter 1_

**SUGAR & SPICE**

**Part 2**

Chapter 7

It _should_ have been a dark and stormy night, but this was LA. They had sun and heat and moon and heat. Atop the roof of the Hyperion, seated in the shadows like a giant gargoyle where the view and the acoustics were just right enough that they must have been the spot where Justine Cooper had eye-spied on the Ghost Roads gathering, Angel watched undetected as a familiar platinum blond head hove into view; he saw Spike leave the Hyperion and walk out into the city night.

That Spike hadn't sensed him was no surprise; at this distance, a vampire had to be actively looking for others of its kind, besides which he was, without arrogance, a master at _not_ being found. If nothing else, Daniel Holtz' relentless decade of pursuit from 1764 onwards had taught Angelus how to be elusive.

As usual he suppressed yet another regret from the lengthy laundry list he had available for his brooding 'pleasure'. Angelus and Darla had been so relieved and gleeful that Holtz had mysteriously a) ceased his pursuit after nine years of unrelenting 'I'm coming to get you' and b) simply disappeared that they'd never bothered to ask the most important question of all: _why_?

Daniel Holtz had been obsessively driven in his quest to annihilate vampires well _before _Angelus and Darla slaughtered his wife and children; it was that which had caught Angelus's attention in the first place and made the monster decide Holtz was just too much self-righteous fun to ignore – Holtz, unwittingly, had had the misfortune to remind Angelus too much of Liam's late father, '_…Darla, darlin', the man's a pure and unfiltered sanctimonious prig, just like me old Da'. If it weren't for that they were born twenty years apart in different countries and bear no resemblance to each other, I would have said they were identical twins separated at birth…'_

By 1774, he and Darla had been bored and weary – and even, for Angelus, a little nervous - of Holtz's relentless pursuit that had seen the man ratchet up 378 vampire killings, a total never equalled before or since, even by the most competent adult Slayers back before the _Cruciamentum _was introduced. So they'd taken his sudden absence at face value and assumed some demon – Holtz being an equal-opps slaughterer of anything that was non-human and larger than a poodle – had turned the man into a tasty snack, despite the fact that nothing – vampire or otherwise – had ever claimed the 'credit' for taking out the biggest threat to non-human sentient species in this dimension for centuries.

It had been an uncharacteristic slip that Angelus had not realised Holtz would not simply 'give up' without an extraordinarily good motivation to do so and made enquiries to establish what had happened. If Angelus had done that, it was more than likely that he would have stumbled across the Niahzian Scrolls, and whilst Angelus would have disregarded them as nonsensical ravings, he would have been forewarned – and Angel would have been clued-in the moment Darla made her enraged, hugely pregnant entrance into the Hyperion.

The whole 'moving men through time' bit would have given Wes' the idea of checking to ensure Sahjahn _hadn't _doctored the Niahzian Scrolls, which in turn would have debunked the whole 'father will kill the son' frame-up – no disintegration of Team Angel, no Qor'Toth, no Holtz, no loss of Cordy to a higher plane to be body-jacked by Jasmine – because whatever Skip had claimed he had a good idea the turncoat demon had merely been bragging up his role by claiming to have manipulated events that in fact, were entirely incidental. Like Wes believed Knox had been a lone sicko – and saddo with no fellow worshippers of Illyria outside his own imagination - so too it was far more likely Jasmine had just seized a convenient opening available to her – she certainly hadn't proven to be any great mastermind during her brief time on this planet, which rather suggested _against_ Skip's whole 'you've been puppets for years' steaming pile of B.S.

And had there been no Jasmine, there would have been no Beast, no need to make a deal with the devils that were the Wolf, Ram and Hart to stop his psychotic patricidal son massacring hundreds of innocent people…sometimes it actually jolted him to realise that according to the laws of physics in _this_ dimension, his college Freshman son Connor 'Riley' should now only just be a babbling three-year old learning to walk, talk and go potty.

_Hello, Hindsight…what took you so long?_

Although…even with Hindsight making her usual grandstanding entrance it was still not possible to unpick just how much of everything that had happened since he'd been in LA – maybe even back in Sunnydale - had actually been coincidental events versus actively manipulated by 'Jasmine' back when she was another dimension's two-for-one combo of Doctors Frankenstein and Moreau looking for new victims.

Sahjahn had brought back Holtz to stop Connor from ever existing, but Holtz's 'pawn' Justine Cooper had been the one to try and murder Wes and kidnap Connor for Holtz, and it had certainly been to Jasmine's benefit that Connor reached human sexual maturity - arguably not the same thing as proper adulthood, but at any rate biologically capable of fathering offspring - much sooner than natural progress allowed. For a moment he tried to imagine a world where the scrolls had been debunked, a world where Connor was still three – a world where the boy _hadn't_ fathered a demonic daughter with the closest woman to a mother he'd ever known and where he certainly _wouldn't_ be dating the Slayer's teenage super-sister…and didn't that just boggle the mind…

Shaking off the reminiscence, for a moment he continued looking at the rapidly moving beacon of blonde hair and pondered whether he should track his grandson using the rooftops. But…no; right now he'd bet that Marcus Hamilton or other Senior Partners' spies were surveilling him on this rooftop and gleefully reporting back what they_ thought_ was Angel slipping further into paranoia about his 'rival' vampire with a soul, Spike. That notion only helped his plan, not hindered it.

In fact, he drew a nostalgic comfort from the Hyperion, from the memories and scents of his friends, and his son. Even as his supernaturally powerful eyesight easily followed the bobbing bleach blond head that was like a beacon in the night, he wryly acknowledged that if anyone had told him he would be _grateful_ for the continued presence of Spike in LA, he would have got them a doctor – or an exorcist. Inescapably however the fact was that as 'grandchildren' went, Spike versus Jasmine was no contest, not that he would ever let Spike know that.

But Spike had stepped into the breach, taken up the slack when Wesley no longer could – or more accurately would. He controlled his face, keeping it impassive for the benefit of any spies, even as inwardly he sighed regretfully. That was the trouble with hindsight. Retrospection allowed you to see all the little streams that you should have dammed up before they merged into a river that became a flash flood and drowned your ass.

That was the trouble with the human species. They were always trying to categorise and compartmentalise the universe but the universe couldn't be listed and ordered for convenience. Spike had quoted Napoleon Bonaparte to him once, ironic considering the man's tyranny: _"'Nothing is so difficult, and therefore so precious, than to be able to decide.'"_ That was why so many dictatorship regimes like Nazi Germany and Communist North Korea or religious fanatics like the Puritans or today Muslim terrorists lasted so long or were able to achieve such a grip over so many people, because it was amazing how many people would _freely _relinquish the uncertainty inherent in freedom of choice in return for the certainty of being told what to do, where to go, what to think.

The twins Change and Choice were frightening and uncertain and they made people take personal responsibility and accountability for their actions, reactions and decisions, and therefore they made people uncomfortable. That was why humans tried to slap stickers on everything and everyone and put little segments of the universe in pigeonholes all nice and tidy with hospital corners. But of course the universe wasn't like that, and no matter how hard you tried to push and press and squeeze and squish, people bulged out of their pigeonholes and overflowed round the sides.

As Spike had once said to Angelus, two complete strangers stepping aside on a street so they didn't collide with each other was a human interaction so profound that it would require several volumes of encyclopaedias to exactly detail. Yet humans frantically refused to think in anything other than labels that were utterly futile to convey any _real_ breadth of meaning. Parent, child, sibling, lover, spouse…friend, enemy…protector, betrayer…

And of course, an individual could fit _several_ of those largely pointless labels at the same time depending on circumstance. That was the thing about vampires, they were static – they could not grow. Other demon species also tended to lack adaptive thinking; maybe that was why the 'human plague' had done so well in driving out of this dimension creatures like Illyria, and why the First had failed despite its overwhelming power and why Jasmine had been defeated…

'…_My, we are in a snit, aren't we? The problem with coming that 'people are pawns' attitude, Angelus love, is that your Master Plan is always going to be fatally flawed. Any minion, or intended patsy, that can think for him, her or itself is inherently unreliable.' _Angelus had raged on about how he'd spent hours planning that particular slaughter-as-art, ruined by one measly human getting an inkling of what was really going on, but Spike's amused commentary had been a direct score, dead on the nail.

And, like Mohammed Ali had said, _'A man who views the world at 50 the same way as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.' _Lindsay MacDonald, for instance had once been evil with a good streak, the threatened murder of children galvanising him into action. But time had moved on and now he had totally gone over to the dark side. Lindsay's determined expenditure of time, money, work and power required to locate, never mind retrieve, that damned amulet from the bottom of the bottom of the Sunnydale crater – whilst evading the Scooby Gang – had demonstrated that; never mind the whammy it must have taken him, even with Sirk and Eve as co-conspirators, to re-corporealise Spike and set up all those distract and divert magicks to interrupt access to the conduit and keep everyone busy during that whole Cup debacle.

And setting himself up as _Doyle_…Pretty much the only thing that couldn't be laid at MacDonald's door were the cyborgs, because the sheer scale of their depredations was too big even for the MacDonald-Sirk partnership to pull off and stay under the radar. No, unlike the movie, that Darth Vader wasn't interested in any last minute _mea culpa_.

He stared up at the few stars that could be glimpsed behind banks of cloud: Spike and Wesley Wyndham-Pryce, two individuals upon whom numerous labels could be slapped, none of which were entirely right, and yet none of which were entirely wrong; both now so essential to him that he marvelled he had been able to function without either or both together for so long.

Spike was perhaps the most amazing revelation – or at least the hardest revelation to _accept_. After all, fake cup or not, Spike had been right when he'd claimed that whilst Drusilla had technically Sired him, _Angelus _had turned him into a monster. William de Vere, alias William the Bloody, alias Spike; serial killer, grandson, protégé, poet, rival, companion, fellow supplicant of redemption….so much noise and swagger and so good at reflecting whatever you threw at him right back at you that you never realised there was anything under the surface, that what you dismissed as a wafer of ice over a meaningless puddle was instead thick titanium shielding over a sink hole so deep as to reach the Earth's core.

Watching the restless city beneath him, he pondered that on some level, he must have known he could trust Spike as soon as he learned that the other vampire had acquired a soul, despite his less than stellar conscious response. When Spike had come to him with Haynesley's plot and a counter-plan, he found to his own surprise that it hadn't been that difficult to take the leap of faith the plan demanded, even though in retrospect he had seen the magnitude of the act of trust he had had to place in Spike.

After it was all over and he'd filled Wes in, he'd heard everything his Watcher _hadn't_ said. He _had_ been utterly helpless, completely vulnerable, totally defenceless, laid out on Haynesley's meat slab, without back-up or another ally, solely dependent on Spike keeping his word and not deciding to switch sides and follow through on Haynesley's offer to put him in Angel's corporeal body.

Yet at the most fundamental level, Angel had never for a second believed Spike would betray him. Even if he had entertained doubt, Spike had consistently demonstrated an honour at odds with his portrayed attitude of anti-Angelism. When faux Doyle had 'warned' him of the parasite, Spike had immediately returned to Wolfram & Hart; again when MacDonald had warned him about Cordelia in an attempt to make Spike kill her, the blond had come straight away to protect those he believed were in danger. _Angelus, pet, we aren't defined by our abilities, but by our choices_…he couldn't remember now what had caused that argument between Angelus and Spike that ended with the younger vampire's dry comment, but it had been typical of Spike's tendency to utter profound truth by poetry, in casual, throwaway asides that the listener could pick up or ignore as they chose.

The others knew his mercurial grandson too, they had articulated what Angel had understood but had not had the words to convey. …_Spike has always been Spike, with a soul or without one…Spike gives his loyalty to people, not things…_ And Spike had certainly been the most clued-up of all of them; he'd been spat out by the amulet for all of half an hour before he was dogging Angel's steps from Fred's lab and accurately pointing out how Angel had sauntered into the belly of the beast and was too busy fighting phantoms and well-placed distractions to realise '_you and yours are being digested.' _Spike had homed in on Eve as a rotten apple – no pun intended – about thirty seconds after _that_.

Then there was Wesley Wyndham-Pryce. The 'label' was Angel's best friend; a wholly inadequate description of their…_relationship –_ such an insipid, neutered word. Wesley was the brother Angel had never had. His Watcher, his magician, his friend; his advisor; his fellow warrior…his guardian and his traitorous companion.

Again Holtz popped back into mind, something Angel had experienced frequently since he'd relinquished the baby to the Fell Brethren. Yet again, he found himself imagining the future that _hadn't_ occurred. Yet what if it had? What if Wesley hadn't taken Connor, what if he had just decided to do nothing and hope that things worked out? Would Angel have been killed by his friends after finally attacking Connor? Who and how many would he have killed first? Wesley? Even _Cordy_?

If you _betrayed_ someone you wilfully caused them _harm_. Daniel Holtz had betrayed Connor by committing suicide and faking it as a vampire attack, quite deliberately sacrificing what he knew could be a positive, purposeful future for the boy in his own obsession with personal vengeance at all costs. There was probably bitter irony in that Holtz _had_ still loved Connor in his own way. He had saved the baby from Sahjahn and Lilah on Angel's express order – something which must have seriously messed with Holtz's those weeks – years to Holtz – in Qor-Toth. But not enough to do what was best for Connor rather than Holtz.

Likewise as Spike had told him in the Hyperion following that unforgettable trip on the Ghost Roads – Nikki Wood had loved her son, but not enough to stop being The Slayer. If she _had_ relinquished the role for her son's sake, who knew, maybe the unprecedented move and crisis situation of a living Slayer who wasn't a Slayer would have forced the Watcher's Council or The Powers That Be themselves, to come up with a _better _way than an endless succession of girl children doomed never to grow up.

So, Wesley had never _betrayed_ him; Wes' had never sought to harm him or Connor. Wes' hadn't been taking the baby _to _his sworn enemy Holtz, he'd been taking the baby _away _from all the dangers facing Connor – which included daddy dearest at that point. _You did the best you could with the knowledge you had…and so did Wesley_, Lorne had pointed out, the voice of wisdom even back then; if Lorne could claim a dollar for all the times he was entitled to say 'I told you so' despite heroically refraining he would be up there with Bill Gates in the _Forbes 500_ list…_But I wasn't willing to accept that until now, and now is too late_.

He rose slowly from his sitting position, blackness amongst blackness, invisible. It was so easy now to look back and spot all the mistakes he'd made, that they'd _all_ made. In the back of his mind, hadn't he known that Wes had always been in love with Fred? Yes. But he'd never done anything about it, never _thought_ anything more of it, because…it hadn't been important.

He was struggling for redemption, slouching towards Bethlehem, and the minutiae of the sidekicks' lives and loves didn't feature in the Big Picture. After all, he'd also known even _before_ Gunn and Fred's romance started that it wouldn't last, even if the pair hadn't rashly jumped in with both pairs of feet courtesy of the adrenaline surge and fuzzy thinking from fighting those theatre simulacra of Comedy and Tragedy – again, the irony. At the time Fred had needed her own _personal_ champion and Gunn had craved to rewrite history so he saved his sister 'this time'. Fred and Gunn loved each other, but neither had never been _in love_ with the other.

And so because it hadn't been important enough in the scheme of things for him to sort out, the die had been cast, and had rolled snake-eyes. Gunn had committed murder – snapped Professor Seidel's neck like a twig – for Fred even though he must have known in the instant he did it he was also striking the death-blow to his and Fred's romance.

Although, maybe that had been the point?

For all his sense of inadequacy over Fred and Wes's respective genius, Gunn had never been _stupid_. Academically untrained, yes - but plenty of brain to match his brawn. Fred could be the Queen of Absolute Denial when it suited her, but Gunn would have started realising the truth of his own transference and the lack of real depth in her feelings long before he could admit it to himself, and he was Wesley's friend. Subconsciously he would have realised that Wes' loved Fred with a depth and totality he did not and could not, and so in a convoluted way had subconsciously taken the opportunity to sabotage his and Fred's relationship himself.

And didn't he need to do the same thing with – for – Nina? Nina was infatuated with him, but she wasn't _in love _with him any more than Fred had been in love with Gunn. During that showdown here against he Oligarchs, he hadn't missed how Nina had instinctively stayed close to Graham Miller, arguably the only normal, and therefore non-mystical, individual present at the time. Spike and Lorne certainly wouldn't have missed that either, nor, probably, Wesley.

The more Fred had recovered from her ordeal in Pylea and regained her mental health, the more her 'rebound romance' with Gunn had faltered. The more Nina adjusted to her new lupine reality and as a result decisively dealt with the issue of her over-controlling sister, the more their own romance would fail – Nina was like an injured soldier infatuated with his hospital nurse. How many Gunn & Fred parallels did he need to trip over before Spike decided he needed bludgeoning with the truth or Lorne clued in Wes, so Angel's XO could broach the subject?

Above and beyond all that, the inescapable fact was that if you wanted someone to love you and care _about _you, then you owed that person the respect and dignity of making sure they were the most important thing _to _you. It was beyond unfair and simply cruel to encourage someone to develop feelings for you if you wanted them to come second – or even lower – in your priorities. Nina would never have that dignity of being the most important thing in his life as long as he remained a Champion of Light, just as he had never had that when the boots had been on his feet as the lover of a Champion of Light back in Sunnydale. As Nina grew in self-confidence and self-esteem, the sign of a healthy self-image would come when she quite rightly refused to accept being expected to 'give' all the support and nurture whilst tolerating being a distant second, third or if at all on his priority list as the Champion dealt with 'today's crisis special'. Right now, that was an issue he was going to have to park. He had a few weeks before it would become critical.

He realised he could no longer spot Spike, the vampire having travelled too far, and momentarily felt a pang of concern, but he quashed it to remain up here on the roof, ostensibly 'brooding' for the benefit of any Marcus Hamilton spies. Well, okay…he _was_ brooding, but not, as they so fondly imagined, was he engulfed in a paranoid fugue about his 'rival' Vampire-With-A-Soul.

Right now he knew just how much he needed Spike, and was grateful for his blond grandson's unspoken but as ever perceptive grasp of the situation in stepping up to the plate while Wes' was focussing on Illyria. Even though he knew they should be focussed on the next, '_which Apocalypse, the one last year, this or next year?'_ he couldn't blame Wesley for taking some time out from the game on this occasion.

With the exception of Spike they were all responsible to some degree for what had happened and this was the first time _ever_ that Wesley had put 'me' first instead of his usual 'there is no I in team' stalwart attitude. Again with the irony – it had taken the blond bombshell all of five seconds to work out the Aztec Demon's endgame, so he had no doubts that Spike would have taken one look at Fred's lurking lab assistant and sussed Knox as mad, bad and in serious need of killing.

In a way though, it even made Wesley better at being Angel's right-hand-man than he had been before, now some of that inflexible morality had been scrubbed out and he looked out at the world through eyes that were grey in more than the literal sense of the word. Useful it might be, but that didn't mean it was a change that he had to _like_. During those three months he'd been at the bottom of the ocean and then those early weeks back at _Angel Investigations_ rebuilding his strength, Wesley had come into his own by operating alone, but Angel wasn't naïve. He knew little of Wesley's 'cases' or his life during that time – none of them did, including Fred.

However, it didn't require a great mental leap to realise that Wesley had jettisoned a considerable number of his scruples; a lot of his actions had been the wrong side of legally questionable and far beyond morally ambiguous in a not-good way. He certainly hadn't been in the habit of casual acquaintance with unsavoury mystical racketeers, like the late and unlamented Emile who had been dispatched by those cyborgs – and that was _before_ Holtz, Justine and Connor pulled off their little magnum opus; Angel wouldn't have allowed it.

Wesley had known exactly how and where to find a Dark Mystic when he needed one; he hadn't broken a sweat at the idea of using a nasty mystical narcotic when necessary. Courtesy of the Ghost Roads, Angel had glimpsed the Wesley who had no problems with torturing a drug-addicted girl for information. Wesley had coldly and methodically gambled with the life of his Slayer by using the Orpheus drug to bring down Angelus. Wesley had had no difficulty obtaining the illegal, dangerous narcotic in the first place possibly due to the fact he'd been drinking far more than was healthy or advisable even back then – truth be told, Wesley's daily Lagavullin consumption had been cranked into high gear, continuing from his futile attempts to 'disprove' the Niahzian Scroll prophecies, long before Illyria made the scene, and even before that masochistic, self-destructive affair with Lilah Morgan. Another thing he had foolishly let slide because Wes's status as 'only' a sidekick meant it wasn't important enough to do anything about.

Ah, there were no adequate words that even began to cover Wesley's twisted relationship with Lilah Morgan; even now he sometimes spotted her ghost lurking in the back of Wesley's eyes. Given that Lilah Morgan had been one of Wolfram & Hart's top-flight lawyers, and what they were able to do in making death nothing more than a minor inconvenience, he just hoped that was the only place Lilah would now ever be. Although he doubted it; Lilah had been just too good at being very bad and if she hadn't had contingency plans for her contingency plans then he would happily sing Barry Manilow in public.

Even more scary was the worry that death might actually have _freed _Lilah up to follow her own script, regardless of that Good Corporate Employee skit she'd run on them when Wolfram & Hart, through her, had offered them control of the LA branch; because although she had done it in a different way than Lindsey McDonald, she'd been just as good at outmanoeuvring the Senior Partners almost to the extent of, dare to say it aloud, 'running rings round them' if sufficiently motivated to do so.

In a way, the Senior Partners were like those MENSA level mega-geniuses that nevertheless got scammed out of their money by a Nigerian email fraud – more than once; superior IQ, but no practical application – they were clever, but not wise; object lessons in how ability and understanding did not always go together. Similarly the Wolf, the Ram and the Hart didn't really _understand_ humans any more than Illyria did. _Any minion or pawn that can think for itself is inherently unreliable…_

Ah yes, Lilah Morgan…Just one more item on the ever-growing list of '_Things It Would Be Unwise to Let Illyria Discover_', although, he had no objections to letting their own Psycho-Smurf whale a while on Justine Cooper, Slayer or no. But there again, he could see trouble brewing. Even lying on the floor with a sword stuck in her abdomen, Faith's eyes had kindled like gasoline-soaked wood when Justine Cooper had been doing her '_Slayer Explains It All'_ riff at Wolfram & Hart and laying claim to Wesley as _her_ Watcher. You could see the incipient cat-fight coming a mile off; no wonder Wes' had been so keen to keep Fallon Mady's Slayer successor well away from Faith and himself.

No way was it going to play out the same way this time though. Eavesdropping and intrusive surveillance be damned; even if Lindsay MacDonald was right about his 'Apocalypse, The' declaration, this time Angel the Vampire with a Soul had no intention of letting the other stuff slide _again_. He would keep an eye on the whole Justine-Faith-Illyria situation ready to crack heads and put out fires as necessary. After all, if only he had said something or taken some action way back when, maybe Fred would be still _be_ Fred and Illyria still stuck in the Deeper Well where it should have stayed. But it had never been important enough – or rather, it had never been detrimental enough to the Mission for Angel, Mr Champion of Light, to have to bother to do something about his friends' distress.

But that of course was the whole crux of the matter. Spike had said it to Buffy - there was no _point_ in making it to Paradise if the people you'd done it all_ for_ weren't right there with you. At that moment, witnessing his grandson face down a frightened and therefore highly dangerous Buffy Summers, he had finally understood the depth of his own folly and how he'd ignored the needs – and the very salvation – of the people closest to him, the only family he had.

What was the point of making it back to being a Real Boy again, if in the end all that amounted to was that he could visit the graves of those he'd wanted to walk in the sun with at noon rather than midnight?

_Continued in Chapter 8…_

© 2011 & 2013, The Cat's Whiskers


	8. Chapter 8

**_Disclaimer_**_: Please see Part 1 Chapter 1_

Warning: mention of paedophilia.

**SUGAR & SPICE**

**Part 2**

Chapter 8

Time had little meaning in Los Angeles. This was the home of Hollywood, the temple of Tinseltown, where all your dreams could come true.

And your nightmares as well.

Los Angeles at night was as busy as Los Angeles during the day, though with different players and different games. Amidst the celebrities and the models at glitzy premieres, the Goths and rockers and drag queens, one more fashion-victim-homage to Sid Vicious attracted no attention. Still the lone man who walked the streets with his beacon-bright hair and hands shoved into the pockets of his black duster drew no hostile notice from drunks or druggies spoiling for a fight. Something about him warned that he was far more dangerous than just another _Sex Pistols_ wannabe and his progress remained unimpeded.

Spike ignored the reverberating incessant techno-beat he could hear for a greater distance than anyone else pounding out of every trendy club along with the lights and glitter and laughter and jewels and silk-clad tasty titbits. To step outside Wolfram & Hart was to be reminded anew each time just why he hated this town. Everything was shiny and sparkling – and plastic to the point where he suspected everything and everyone should have '_Made in Taiwan'_ stamped somewhere. LA was so bright yet so brittle…what was the word? Ah, yes, _febrile_, an excellent description.

Still, it was hardly surprising, Spike supposed. Millions of years ago this whole area had been the Temple of Illyria, then Wolfram & Hart had desecrated the ground with the blood of a lunatic Josef Mengele forerunner – Matthias-Pavayne-you-bastard. In a mystical sense, prime real estate this was not.

Walking in the night air helped him clear his head and focus; he'd written some of his best poetry after his night walks, though it was too warm here for his taste. A proper night walk needed to be done when the night-air was clear and crisp, with just a tang of winter, under a huge, full moon, low in the sky and dangerously mustard-yellow, and seasoned with occasional, damp wreaths of night-mist snaking through the air: like Dartmoor at the start of _Hound of the Baskervilles – _ominous, but not tipping over into full-on and over-blown _An American Werewolf in London _outright scary.

The imagery made him maudlin for home; back when he'd been Sired, London was still, if you squinted a bit, an ancient city nestling within green and blue rural beauty, like a pretty jewel centred on a velvet cushion, the parks and greater London greenbelt verdant thanks to the great rivers of the Thames, Serpentine, Fleet and others. He hadn't been back to England for any proper length of time in…decades longer than he cared to remember, and he _didn't_ count that blink-and-you-miss-it fun-fest of a jaunt to the Deeper Well.

A massive demon tomb in the _Cotswolds_? Who would ever have imagined? But there was a hole in the world, wasn't there? Conspicuous and Fred-shaped…

_Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world,_

_Which I find myself constantly walking around in daytime,_

_And falling into at night._

Edna St. Vincent Millay; sissy name but not a sissy woman. She'd understood that kind of pain, had Vin'; the kind that went so deep and hurt so much you looked around and wondered how nobody could notice you were walking about with a gaping wound in your chest where your heart had been ripped out. She'd called him Will – refused to utter the word 'Spike' – and admired his poetry. Poor Vin… He had heard her heart labouring even at 30 and knew it would be a miracle if she made it anywhere near to twice that; but then so had she, in tune with herself on a level few humans managed:

_My candle burns at both ends -_

_It will not last the night._

_But ah, my foes, and oh my friends,_

_It gives a lovely light_!

He would've been tempted to Sire her, had his experience with his mum not taught him a brutal but explicit lesson in the futility of such a gesture – the poetry would have most likely died with the woman leaving the travesty of the demon to reap the rewards of her talent. Not bloody likely.

Idly he wondered what Angel's deal with Drogyn had been. A moniker like 'Guardian of the Deeper Well' just smacked of one of those 'bad boy doing penance' deals, like Angel getting lumbered with this Champion of Light redemption gig. He suspected that Angel was cooking something up with Drongo-Boy too in the let's-stick-it-to-Evil game; possibly as a way to sweeten up Illyria? Leave us not forget that Drogyn's _raison d'être _was keeping things like Illyria trapped _in_ the Deeper Well. The Blue Meanie living large in LA was not exactly Doggie's finest hour, or a sterling advert for his effective management of what were, basically, the Turok-Han version of demons: amped-up mega-monsters whose politics all tended to a 'rule the world or destroy it' manifesto.

Still, he was hardly one to talk when it came to laughing at anyone else's rash propensity for jumping through hoops of penitence for an All Is Forgiven Pass Go & Collect $200 ticket without thinking it through. His own soul had been back in his body for barely enough time to settle the first month's rent and pick out the chintz before he had been waving his hand and saying, 'Hey, I'll be flash-fried for all that is sweetness and light. Give me that tacky dime-store necklace and stand well back.'

Was there anyone he could sue, by the way, an American version of the Trades Description Act? _'Flash-fried' my arse_; maybe they didn't have room to write it down in full gory detail: _well, sorry, 'flash' - actually that's a misnomer that implies an instantaneous puff of smoke so fast you're done before you know it. We'd really rather not describe the way every thousandth of each and every second is an unendurable eternity of searing unspeakable agony as you're slowly deep fried cell by cell from the boots up for about…oooh, five minutes? Maybe ten? No more than twelve, tops…honest, or your money back! Have a nice day._

He had to pause and draw in a lungful of entirely unnecessary air, but decided he felt better within himself now he'd been unable to unwind a little and let his synapses idle. Stepping in to be the Hero's sidekick whilst Wesley was otherwise engaged had given him a whole new appreciation for the efforts of one Xander Harris – not that he would ever let the kid _know _that of course. The Little Bit had told him what Xander had said to her, about seven years in the background and on the edges of the photograph. To spend your whole life an inch from the spotlight yet never be able to move that one step left into the circle?

With super-strength, super-speed, super-senses and super-healing, he was… whacked. Bushed. Had it. Done in. Cream crackered to the max. Exhausted. He didn't even have to tote around any gadgets – like he'd once said to Buffy, '_A Slayer must always reach for her weapon…I've already got mine_' – and he was still ready for early nights and a warm cup of Horlicks-laced O Neg. How had Xander had the energy to do all that running around with just his weedy little human body holding him up, usually hauling some big-ass bazooka thing Buffy often wouldn't let him use? The sidekick fought just as hard as the hero against the same monsters, but the difference was the Hero got the glory and the girl and usually the natty superpowers while the Boy Wonder got a long-service medal and gold pocket-watch and, assuming he or she lived that long, chronic arthritis caused by a conspicuous lack of said superpowers.

At least it was only a temporary situation. He intended to make sure of that. He'd learned manipulation from the master – _thank you, Angelus_. He couldn't say he wasn't _flattered_ to be part of this 'Second Circle of Nine' or whatever those tatty old books called it (whenever they bothered to make any reference at all to it other than to unhelpfully direct you towards the long-lost and beyond obscure Scroll of Name that nobody had ever heard of).

But by the same token, he was _Spike_; he knew his place, and it was as nobody's _second_, especially not Angel's; okay so he and his grandsire had achieved a certain level of accord. Simpatico had never been their problem anyway – from the night Dru Sired him, he and the Brooding One had had that almost prescient knowledge of what each other would say or do or needed. It was all the surrounding crap; everything Louis Vuitton had ever made wouldn't be enough to pack all their baggage.

Angel needed his second-in-command to be Wesley just as Buffy had needed someone like Giles. The two Watchers were a crag of calm, a sheltering oasis of know-how and know-it-all always available to shelter and provide refreshing new hope and direction when the sun of adversity was beating down on your head at full strength.

Mercifully, Wesley seemed to be making his way out of the fog now though – certainly since sweet Fred had proven herself brilliant enough to save her soul and her neurons by hiding inside Illyria's cerebellum. Wesley was adjusting to the duality of Fred/Illyria and his English head would hopefully soon be back in the game. If not, his fellow Englishman would just have to apply a little carefully judged pressure, and he had two Slayers he could use to do it – Faith, the Dark Slayer and Justine Bloody Cooper who had tried to murder Angel's favourite Watcher…which made it a miracle she hadn't become the first Slayer Angel had ever killed.

Unlike Fred, Illyria had had no inhibitions about talking behind Wesley's back – the concept of lies and even dissembling was completely unknown to a being who had never needed to deceive or use subterfuge – or subtlety – to get what it wanted or make its opinion known. Getting the demon to spill the skinny on some essential '_Angel: His Early LA Period_', to Angel's vampire grandson had been the proverbial candy and baby routine.

Illyria had simply accessed Fred's memories and filled him in on some of the clearly interesting subtext he was picking up: Angel driving his friends away due to Darla's return and Wes subsequently getting shot by the zombie cop - Faith's little torture session and the initial estrangement between Wes and Angel when the vampire protected her even after what she'd done to her Watcher - the second and more serious breach when Wesley had been fooled by a supposedly faked (nobody seemed entirely sure it had been phoney) prophecy about Angel murdering some baby - plus the gradual re-gathering of the team when Cordelia Chase had been subsumed by a mystical being, Jasmine. Illyria hadn't been quite clear on that point – something to do with massive altering of reality and realignment of the space-time continuum, but once she'd started talking like Chief O'Brien in an episode of _Star Trek: Deep Space 9 _he'd redirected the conversation.

Illyria had also provided several enlightening side orders to the main dishes – Gunn had murdered a man for Fred - Wes had been in love with Fred since forever – Wes had nearly killed Faith _and_ himself capturing Angelus for Willow to re-ensoul him – Justine Bloody Cooper (Illyria seemed unaware that was not her actual name) had cut Wes's throat and left him to die - _and_ he'd had a six-month dark and dirty affair with Wolfram & Hart _über-bitch_ Lilah Morgan that had brought out some interesting sexual kinks, leaning towards the masochistic, in Wesley's psyche.

At that point the _Life & Times_ recital had come to an abrupt end; those latter two bits of info floating around inside Fred's…whatever…had made Illyria abruptly cranky and it had stomped off in a clearly agitated manner. Nevertheless, it had been enough that he now had a full picture. Wesley hadn't simply got out of bed one morning and picked up a To-Do List that read: _buy milk, cancel papers, betray Angel_. Like the classic rhyme said, _all for want of a horse-shoe nail_… Angel had made a tiny crack in Team Angel when he had forced his friends away because of his obsession with Darla – ah, dear Great-Grand-Dam, how he didn't miss _her_. Everything had built up from there, like water dripping onto that crack and wearing at it, widening it and deepening it until one day you looked and _whoa!_ all of a sudden here be Niagara Falls – and you were about to go over it in a leaking barrel.

He dusted the two fledgling vamps that leaped out from the trashcans without even breaking stride, but it brought him out of his introspection. His inner demon knew there was plenty of night left and he wasn't particularly ready to return to the _Hyperion_. Half the fun of being there was to go find Angel in whatever room he was currently refurbishing and pithily critique the décor, colour-scheme, etc.

Right now, he was Billy-No-Mates. Angel was getting some…okay with a werewolf, but still. Gunn had his real-life Electra and Wes of course was snuggling with Fred and_ ipso facto_ the Psycho-Smurf. Even Lorne was smooching with a long-time gal-pal at Caritas whom he'd apparently recently noticed _was _a gal as well as a pal…Ann, Amy, Arlette…no Agnes – Aggie that was what he'd overheard her name as. It was enough to give a vamp a complex…

A faint scent tickled his nostrils, very faint, a not-quite-human-not-fully-demon tang. Usually that indicated a half-breed being, someone like Whistler had been or Francis Doyle the Brachen Halfling, but the very faintness of the signature indicated a vampire, since the undead had an almost negligible body scent. That helped when it came to hunting, since if the vampire was in human form, you didn't waste half the night stalking one of your own kind instead of a genuinely tasty morsel.

The scent was however heavily overlaid with _Chanel No. 5…Harmony_. Spike looked around him, vaguely recognising the suburb. Moderately upscale old-town apartment blocks where legal secretaries and the like could live in comfort if not opulence. From the architectural style, they dated from the 1930s like the Hyperion, and doubtless eventually would be torn down for executive condos or a theme park.

Idly he wondered about calling on Harmony. She redefined the concept of dumb blonde and since she was a dead woman walking he didn't need an invite to enter her apartment. A minute after walking in he could sweet talk her into bed. Every other male he knew was getting some, and there were no other candidates – Nina…perilously too close to bestiality; Illyria would rip him asunder if he made a pass; Fred would excoriate him with one I'm-so-disappointed-in-you look; Gwen would practice her frying techniques and he'd been burned alive in unspeakable agony once already, thank you very much.

Finally he decided against it. He was a Champion of Light after all, and the good guy always did the decent thing; using Harmony as a substitute for Buffy would not be nice. He raised his hand in mocking salute towards Harmony's apartment window – and stiffened as he saw her briefly silhouetted against the shades with some sort of deformed bulge attached to her upper torso!

_What?_

Moving with only the speed his kind could achieve, he raced effortlessly up the stairs to the floor her apartment was on. Even as he did so, he could not imagine what sort of demon would attack _Harmony_, but by the same token, he'd never have imagined that Angel would simply hand over a baby to the Fell Brethren like it was a Wal-Mart Offer of the Week. He made the landing and moved cautiously down the corridor in total silence towards the apartment door; vamps who dashed headlong into unknown situations tended to get dusted.

His hearing picked up a single rapid heartbeat and his supernaturally enhanced nose wrinkled against the smell – not blood, but definitely faecal matter and ammonia that indicated urine. There were at least two dozen small demon species that habitually inhabited sewerage systems, and about fifteen of those fell into the card-carrying fangs/claws/tentacles/spines variety with added eat-your-face-as-soon-as-look-at-you attitude.

But there were few demons of any species that tended to attack vampires. Those no-better-than-they-ought-to-be types like the Arch Dick Sebassis might go on about the undead being inferior Halflings beneath their notice, while those at the bottom-feeder end of the scale were more honest in their admittance that vampires tended to be perpetually grumpy enough to be avoided. The simple fact was that vampires were like Brussel Sprouts – it was impossible to make them taste nice; mystical energy might sustain the human body as home to the inner demon, but the human was still dead and tasted like it. One of those little sewer demon critters would have to be beyond starving before taking a chunk out of even something as delectable as Harmony would be appealing.

Still, better be prepared. His ears told him that the other apartments either side were currently empty, so nobody was likely to walk out and freak out at the sight of him. His face assumed an even worse aspect under the cheap, bare hallway light bulb as he went vamp-face and curled back his lips to bare his fangs. Unconsciously shifting his body slightly forward and down into a vampire's signature pre-attack crouch, Spike sprang against the door with all his body weight causing it to fly open and allow him to land in the centre of the room with the full element of surprise on his side.

Not three feet directly in front of him, Harmony was also in full vampire-face, bending over a human baby in a bassinet.

His forward momentum carrying him on, he reacted automatically and hit her front full on with his body, knocking her away from the defenceless infant and sending them both to the floor with a jarring crash. Also having her inner demon near the surface, Harmony reacted with blind instinct to a full-on vampire bursting into her nest and apparently intending to make a meal of her offspring. Reflexively both lashed out at each other.

Unlike a human woman who generally had less physical power than a man, male and female vampires were evenly matched in the wallop department, the fighting skills of the individual vampire plus the viciousness of the particular inhabiting demon being the deciding factors. However, while Spike fought with the benefit of over a century of experience and the ruthlessly rigorous training instilled by Angelus topped up with the polish given by weeks of test-fights with Illyria, Harmony had the savage ferocity of the demon married to the primal rage of a mother defending her child sprinkled with the confetti of a Sunnydale Cheerleader's viciousness.

They crashed around the kitchen-bedroom of the tiny open-plan apartment, shrieking and spitting and snarling, heedless of the baby's fearful wails or the smashed ornaments and furniture that sliced, gashed and lacerated their flailing forms, slashing so deep that white bone was exposed, tearing gaping wounds, inflicting horrific damage that would have been fatal in most other species, human or otherwise.

Spike roared bestially as Harmony ripped deep into his neck, crushing cartilage and tearing muscle; blindly lashing out with his leg as the two vampires thrashed in a death roll, his boot caught the bassinet and threw it hard against the wall with a resounding, splintering smash. Cordelia's terrified screams abruptly silenced, stopping both vampires in their tracks as her terrified shrieks hadn't.

Blindly Harmony scrambled for her baby, frantically diving across the bed and upending the split bassinet, moaning in relief as she tore at the swaddling to reveal a silently crying but no longer screaming baby unharmed, the solid construct of the bassinet having protected Cordelia from the impact of impromptu flight.

"DON'T YOU EAT THAT BABY!" Spike roared.

"DON'T YOU HURT MY BABY!" Harmony shrieked.

There was a short pause while both mentally replayed what the other had just said.

"What?"

"Huh?"

"You're not going to eat that baby!" Spike declared. "I saw you about to eat it!"

"Are you _tripping_?" Harmony stood up furiously, "And don't you call Cordelia an 'it'! You burst in here and attacked me; I thought _you_ were after a quick snack!"

Spike frowned, and clarified: "You're not wanting to eat the baby, then?"

"Gross!" Harmony spat at him, before crooning to the whimpering infant. "Don't you listen to the nasty monster, baby. Mommy's here, yes, she is!"

_Mommy?_ "Er…Harm…" Spike said, gingerly clambering to his feet unsteadily due to his grievous wounds, pressing a mangled hand to the damage to his neck which was making clear speech difficult. "Where did you get the baby?"

"What do you mean, 'Where did you get the baby?'" Harmony retorted with full on Valley girl attitude.

"Vampires can't have children, Harmony." Spike snapped as the agony of his injuries started to kick in; his left lung was definitely punctured sufficiently to double as a sieve.

"Shows how much you know." Harmony sniped defensively and incongruously as she cuddled 'Cordelia' against a torso that been slashed open to the breastbone.

"Quite a bit more than you do, pet; and don't try to kid a kidder, love, I'm nearly a hundred-and-fifty years old all told and vampires are _sterile_. Try again."

Harmony picked up the bassinet, ignoring Spike and fussing with it ineffectually as she was forced to put the baby on the top of the big bed or get her stained – had Harmony's body not lacked the large volume of blood a human being had, her terrible wounds would have bathed the infant in gore. "Cordelia is my daughter!"

"_Harmony_."

"She doesn't want her!"

"Who doesn't want her?"

"Her mother dumped her!" charged Harmony, pointing with one lacerated arm, looking like a mangled extra from _An American Werewolf in London_, "Out in the alley by the trashcans!"

Spike looked at the baby who had stopped crying, but who had one chubby fist crammed in its mouth, its lashes still damp as it looked with unmistakeable anxiety from one big person to the other. "When did this happen?"

Harmony shrugged as she fussed, "About a week ago."

"A week? That's odd." Spike walked forward only to stop and raise his mauled, lacerated hands, appeasing, as Harmony's eyes glowed yellow and her fangs erupted again.

"Cordelia's not odd! She's adorable!" Harmony growled.

"I meant the timing, Harmony." Spike said patiently. "If a human parent is going to abandon its offspring, he or she does it when the sprog's a newborn and no emotional bond has been formed."

Risking movement, he moved closer to the baby ignoring the way Harmony tensed, and hunkered down, staring back as the baby watched him with wide eyes. "Hmmm."

"What?" Harmony snapped, bristling.

"Only the mother dumped her?"

"Yes," Harmony nodded, eyeing him warily, before sniping with feminine outrage, "her so-called father probably did your usual man-trick of heading for the hills as soon as he found out the girl was expecting."

"I'm not a man, pet," Spike reminded absently, "and I reckon the father was still in the picture."

"How you figure?" Harmony looked at the baby as if expecting to see some explanatory label to have appeared on her.

"She's not _surprised_ by me." Spike explained. "I was a posthumous birth – my dad was killed in a carriage accident a month before I was born, and until I was about ten months old, the only adult humans I had contact with were all women – my mum and the housemaids. The first time a man held me - I think it was our butler - startled me so much I screamed the place down, but look at her, she's not surprised or frightened by me, so she must have been around an adult male long enough for the XY chromosome contingent not to be a novelty." Spike frowned thoughtfully. "So we have both mom and dad in the picture, she's a good eight months old, not a newborn, and it's obvious she's been well cared for, so why suddenly dump her _now_?"

"I don't care." Harmony snapped. "They did and I saved her."

Spike looked at 'Cordelia', assessing the baby. Though not a mulatto – with one black and one white parent – the little girl had definite Hispanic or Latino ancestry, possibly Polynesian, as there was a hint of Tonga or Hawaii about her eyes; she could only be described as…_glowing_. Those sweet ringlets were a bright gold-bronze, her skin was the burnished hue of antique gold, and her big velvet eyes were the pale brown of pure honey.

Somewhat shakily, Harmony sank onto the bed next to her daughter. "Take a hike, Spike, it's going to take me forever to clean up this mess!"

Spike didn't respond as he thought fast and came to an instant decision. Harmony's wounds were just as terrible as his own and the very worst would require several days to fully heal even if the process could be greatly speeded up with a large intake of fresh _human_ blood. She had some leeway as the employee blood testing at Wolfram & Hart wasn't due for a few more days, by which time she could switch back to non-homo haemoglobin, and it wasn't a problem for him at all. As a ghost he'd never been 'in the program', and when Lindsey McDonald's anonymously mailed empty-box spell had re-corporealised him, he had no longer been bound to the amulet, thus no longer under the control of Wolfram & Hart, a free agent. It had obviously never occurred to Angel to force him – or rather be stupid enough to try - onto the testing program – or else General Grumpy-pants had simply assumed he was tested with the rest of the minions. But already he was experiencing the first pangs of a visceral, voracious hunger as the mystical magicks sustaining his body required human blood to repair his injuries.

Harmony wouldn't leave the baby alone and unprotected in her apartment, but he had only a half-hour, forty-five minutes if he was lucky, before her own pain and hunger reactions from the battle overwhelmed her with a vengeance – she had no soul and her inner demon would immediately view the baby she had just fought to save as much needed sustenance once the pain of healing kicked in. That didn't even begin to count her neighbours – right now all those humans who were trying to make good in the big city were out networking in the clubs, which meant unless he did something now in about an hour Harmony would have eaten the baby and would be rampaging through the neighbourhood eating anyone she came across like she was starring in her very own personal George Romero movie.

"You clean everything up, pet, nice and tidy," he told her, standing up; there was no way she would allow him to take the baby with him.

He left, closing the door and going downstairs as fast as his injuries would allow him, considering the fastest options. He needed human blood – a full eight pints and then some – and he needed it now. The nearest blood-bank clinic was only two blocks away, although since it was the middle of the night, it would have to be broken into; places that were 'open', like charity hospitals and such would not give him more than a pint or two even assuming he could come up with something plausible enough to avert suspicion and avoid them getting a look at injuries no human could have survived – he had a gaping gash exposing his spleen, for pity's sake. Finally, he only had a few hundred dollars on him - his real stash cash was back at the Hyperion, and he didn't have time to collect it and find an underworld contact who supply him such large blood volume on the spot and then get it back here.

A memory surfaced, and Spike looked around the district Harmony lived in more closely; his lips curved upwards in a travesty of a smile. Buttoning up the leather duster so his terrible injuries didn't show, he set off towards the blood-bank, cutting through several back alleys with the predatory stalk of a leopard, his almost visible aura of lethal menace making several creatures draw back and have second thoughts. Despite the relentless passing of every second he stalked rather than walked and did not run. Running was a sign of panic, panic was a sign of weakness, and weakness drew predators.

It was momentary to get in the blood-bank; the supplies were cold, not warm and there was no time to heat them, but he gorged himself, feeling the renewing fluid actually run back out of his body to stain his clothing through the more horrific gashes rent in his flesh. Finally he left all the money he had, with a note apologising for a prank that went too far; the money was more than enough to replace all the supply he'd just drunk and then some. He checked his watch – he'd left Harmony's twenty minutes ago; he had ten minutes to thirty if he was lucky. Time to get his arse in gear.

Another block away a medium-height, portly man exited a building. Blue suit, salt-and-pepper hair, pleasant but not extraordinary of features, he was utterly unremarkable, looking up startled when Spike appeared next to him though the store window showed nobody there. "Good evening, Mr Winson."

"Who are you?" Mr Winson asked with startled suspicion.

"Mr Gregerson sent me," Spike lied with a slight smile, "because he appreciated your _assistance_ with that little financial conundrum. As a token, Mr Gregerson has given you a gift." Spike gestured with his hand in the direction he'd come from.

"Gift?" Mr Winson preened with pleased surprise and automatically fell into step with Spike, not noticing that the street was deserted or that he was voluntarily accompanying a complete stranger who-knew-where.

"Yes sir." Spike led the way to the front of Harmony's apartment building. "Up here."

Mr Winson followed him curiously and they rode the elevator in silence, Mr Winson casting a surreptitious glance at Spike nervously as tiny trickles of blood began to sluggishly seep from the cuffs of the duster around Spike's wrists. Exiting the elevator on Harmony's floor, Spike led Mr Winson straight into the apartment, the man stopping short at the incongruous sight of a horribly mauled woman righting furniture while grumbling to herself. The woman's body looked as if it had been torn and slashed by some wild beast; after that first second Mr Winson showed no surprise at the apartment's lack of mirrors, since no human woman could have survived such injuries.

Harmony paused as she noticed them and looked at Spike and the human man in bewilderment. Before she could speak, Spike gestured and asked, "What do you think?"

Automatically Winson looked at Harmony's bed – the bassinet having been reduced irrevocably to kindling - and his jaw dropped as he saw Cordelia. Clasping both hands together, Winson gasped, "I-I-I, she's _beautiful_."

Harmony blinked and smiled uncertainly at this delighted assessment of her daughter.

"Perfect, absolutely perfect," Mr Winson was almost moved to tears. "I don't know what to say. Mr Gregerson's generosity…" He turned to look at Spike, who had moved slightly to one side behind him, "Has she been prepared?"

"Prepared?" Harmony repeated the word, trying to get past a sense of confusion; she was hurting, exhausted and she just couldn't seem to push aside an increasingly insistent, bone-deep _hungerhungerhunger_. Reflexively she glanced at Spike for guidance, but his face was impassive. Harmony looked again into Spike's eyes and instinctively tensed – pure psychopathic intent shone from those sky-blue orbs.

Mr Winson nodded distractedly, enraptured by the infant on the bed. "Yes, at this young an age it can be difficult to penetrate the vagina without advance stimulation." He edged closer to the baby, who regarded him in silence.

It was a little-known fact regarding vampires that if they managed to survive the Slayer and assorted other dangers to be about fifty to eighty years 'old' they developed, in addition to their already present fangs, the ability to elongate their fingertips into razor-sharp, talon-like claws. Ninety-nine percent of all vampires were merely savage, rather than savage and smart, so the few that lasted so long were extremely rare, and amongst those that did the ability was not often utilised because unlike fangs, which erupted instantly, it took a second or two for the transformation to occur and in a battle the vampire's speed, strength and tearing incisor teeth meant they weren't usually necessary. When in play, however, they were fearsome.

Spike, who all told, was a solid hundred and fifty years old, lashed out with his hand in a savage blow that was nevertheless perfectly weighted and precisely balanced. While striking with enough force to knock Winson over, his claws neatly sliced through the human's vocal chords, but did not touch the windpipe or jugular. Clutching his throat involuntarily in reflex from the terrible injury, Winson was hurled to the floor, rolling around like a beetle turned on its back.

"Eat up, Harm."

It happened so fast Harmony had no time to consciously understand what had just happened, but in an instant she was swamped by a _starvation_ so sudden that the inner demon, the primordial beast usually held in check by the higher-reasoning faculties of the human host, overwhelmed mind and reason. So fast she was almost a blur, the demoness dropped to its knees beside Winson and simply bit into the nearest part of his torso through cloth, gulping the raw gobbet down whole without even chewing as Winson writhed, his mouth working soundlessly like a goldfish as his severed vocal chords negated his efforts to scream.

Spike watched impassively, even when Winson's gore spattered his boots. Winson was an abomination in all realms, even the demon world. While slaughtering the spawn of your enemy was perfectly acceptable, and sacrificing your children for major black-magic mojo a daily occurrence in most places – not least Wolfram & Hart - there was still a vast difference between killing and violating. Slaughtering spawn or younglings was not a problem, but having sexual congress with something while it was still spawn/juvenile and not full-grown was beyond the pale across the demonic dimensions even amongst beings that would cheerfully go in wholesale for the sword-slashing rapine and pillage of males, females, both and neither, demons, animals, and even assorted fauna, flora and inanimate objects – as long as they were of _adult _maturity. Even Angelus, while slaughtering children with merciless delight, had never ever had any sexual interest in them and he had been about as utterly depraved a creature as you could get in any dimension.

Finally, finally, the gulping, chomping and crunching stopped and what little still remained of the mangled mess quivered and lay still. Spike remained absolutely still as the demoness raised glowing mustard eyes and spotted him, knowing he had never been closer to death – real, dusted on the spot death – than he was right now. Harmony had no higher rational brain function at the moment, being completely taken over by the pure demon within. Harmony's demon was not particularly vicious – as long as she had food and cool clothes, she had no desperate urge to destroy/conquer the world. But the fight with Spike, a feast of blood and flesh and the instinct to protect her spawn had pushed the demoness into a totally primordial state, like how Wesley had described Angel as being in Pylea when his inner demon had surfaced.

When a human was killed and became vampire, the demon absorbed the memories and often personality traits of the human host, and indeed _needed_ these to survive. Without the higher brain functions of the human's mind to control the bestial urges of the demon, the demon would manifest in its pure, unthinking animal form, and as such would be spotted - and killed - instantly. Now the demon was all that was here, pure and utterly savage, driven even deeper into the primal state by the gore and warm blood it had devoured.

Spike didn't twitch as the demoness sniffed the air, never taking her eyes of him; silently he beseeched every deity he could remember and any who might be listening on the off-chance while silently willing Cordelia to remain silent. In this state, the demoness might not recognise Cordelia as anything other than more food, and weakened by his own wounds, Spike could not protect himself or the baby from the fully unleashed feral power of the demoness who had the strength gained from just having gorged on a human body.

Miraculously Cordelia remained quiescent, exhausting by the extended crying. The demoness slowly straightened up from her crouch, swaying uncertainly as she tried to process the situation – she had had a death battle with the male, but then he had brought her food. A human spawn lay nearby, but her stomach was full of rich meat, and the male was not now showing any aggressive posturing, nor had he tried to drive her away from the food he had brought so he could feed instead. The male smelled of blood and death; it was pleasing. With a low grunt, the demoness moved, shoving the male against the wood obstruction that prevented a view of the stars. She ignored the male's sounds, "Ouch! _Harm!_", neither understanding them nor caring that she did not.

"Bloody hell, you've got to be kidding me," gasped Spike as his ribs protested vehemently, the demoness pawing in frustrated bafflement at the clothing she lacked the rationality to recognise or remember knowledge of how to remove, but then Cordelia made a soft mewling noise and the demoness snapped her head round to stare alertly at the bed.

"Oh, no you don't." Clasping the demoness's face and forcing her head back to look at him, Spike forcefully kissed her before she could react violently, frantically unbuckling his belt as he did so with one hand.

Responding instinctively to this act, the demoness pinned the twisting male against the convenient wall support. Ignoring the unimportant spawn and the corpse on the floor, she mounted him and began to mate fiercely, the male clutching her to him as they slid to the floor in a tangled confusion of limbs…

_Concluded in Chapter 9…_

© 2005 & 2011 The Cat's Whiskers

**Note:** Sorry, forgot this from Chapter 5: _Geis,_ pronounced 'gesh' to rhyme with 'fresh'; the plural can be either _gessi _or _geasa_ (pronounced geshi/gesha). Geis is an ancient Irish Gaelic term meaning a mystical compulsion or supernaturally enforced prohibition. Originally a _geis_ was a complex plot device where the hero(ine) could be put under a _geis_ to undertake some heroic task or alternatively be mystically prohibited from doing something.

The term was popular in fantasy-fiction until the 19th Century; originally a geis was an interwoven, detailed enchantment that played a major role in an epic, though by Victorian times the breadth of the 'geis' idea and the inherent scope for complicated-compulsion plotlines had been narrowed and simplified considerably so that often a geis was no more than a simple compulsion/prohibition spell. Sadly, geis appears to have disappeared from most modern and online dictionaries, thesauruses and computer spell-checkers, which is a pity, as it's an extraordinarily useful thing for a fantasy writer to know about, especially considering that our favourite vampire Angel, of course, is Irish!


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